If you are white and / or have a penis (unless you identify as a woman) you can expect to have a hard time advancing beyond the automatic promotion ranks.

Your very statement suggests that most whites and most men (and by virtue, white men especially) should be basically piled up in the lower ranks. We should be seeing a significant number of qualified white men sitting in ranks like E-4 and E-5 for most of their re-enlistment. Considering how many of them there are, especially men, and considering that the military demobilized from Iraq & Afghanistan, there should be a fucking enormous backlog of whites and men sitting around for 3-4 years, even after re-enlistment, who are overqualified for ranks like E-6 while women & minorities get fast-tracked from E-4 to E-6 in only a couple years.

That should be the case if your statement is true, and I haven't seen or heard that at all.