The Royal Air force (RAF) specifically requested that anyone but a white male pilot be sent to appear alongside film star Tom Cruise at the premiere of the film Top Gun: Maverick earlier this year.
The email, which was sent in April ahead of the May 19th Top Gun: Maverick premiere in London, called for candidates among the RAF’s pilots to be selected to appear alongside the film’s star, Tom Cruise — but asked that no white males be considered if possible.
The alleged email, which was obtained and published by the Daily Mail newspaper this week, was written by a person named “Sarah” and asked: “Do any of you have a ‘Pilot, who is preferably not white male’ who would like to be the ‘RAF’ face at a press event for the release of Top Gun 2?”
The leaked email is just the latest report suggesting a negative attitude towards white men in the RAF, with an RAF chief recruiter even resigning from her post earlier this month after she had been asked to, as she saw it, unlawfully discriminate against white male candidates.
According to the recruiter, she was asked to prioritise ethnic minority and female candidates: “This direction is to make offers of employment to additional women and EM [ethnic minority] candidates solely on the basis of their protected characteristics and in preference to non-EM men who have successfully passed all selection criteria ahead of them.”
Other sources within the RAF have claimed that the air force’s need for diversity is even impacting the combat readiness of the force itself.
“We are all really pro-diversity and we want to see better representation across the services but … levels of ambition for ethnic targets … are absolutely crazy,” one source told Sky News. Another said that the leadership of the RAF were willing to “break the operational requirement of the air force” for the sake of diversity.