Blacks Joining Army Decline: Ignore the Obvious

A June 24 AP article "Decline for military in black recruits" cited "other job prospects are soaring" and "relatives of potential recruits increasingly are discouraging them from joining" as the top two reasons for the decline by more than one-third of enlisting black recruits.

"The global war on terror has taken its toll, no question," said Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon's director of accession policy, in an Associated Press interview.

The soaring of job prospects, discouraging relatives and the toll from the global war on terror, completely and totally miss the point and is typical in America's continuing cosmetic discussion of African Americans.

The biggest deterrent of African Americans in the military is President Bush.  Blacks continue to be marginal, almost citizens in America, bandied about like a beach volleyball and whose issues erupt every four years only to disappear and fester until the next national election.

The African American community is well aware that the tax cuts of this Administration has meant hundreds of billions of dollars less that the government has to help those that desperately needd that help. One program that has received less and less funding is Head Start, a federal program that helps low-income families ready children to begin school. I remember arriving to school early and seeing kids getting breakfast; I remember my mother explaining to me that everyone doesn't have enough money to get breakfast at home.  Profound.

The African American community is well aware that all those black folk didn't have to die in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  We will never forget that FEMA head "Great Job" Brownie didn't even know that people were in the Convention Center when America had watched the New Orleans disaster from the end of the week national weather reports, through the weekend and right into the disaster. We will never, ever, ever forget that people that went to help were turned away while Americans drowned. We will never forget watching bloated, floating corpses in America while Condoleeza Rice shopped at Ferragamo.

The African American community is well aware that President Bush refused five years in a row to speak at the NAACP national convention, hadn't invited the NAACP leadership to the White House and only spoke in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So when Kanye said "George Bush doesn't care about black people," he was only stating the obvious.

The African American community is well aware that Republicans try to keep black folk from voting.  Drational is currently diaring on 'caging', that

Independent researchers at TPMMuckraker and ePluribusmedia article (with whom I collaborated) confirmed racial bias in caging lists prepared by the Republican Party of Florida, ostensibly on behalf of the RNC.

There were widespread efforts across the nation to generate caging lists to be used to challenge voters at the polls.

While America talked about hanging chads and why blacks couldn't mark the ballot correct, we were experiencing the Republican efforts to keep us three-fifths human beings.

State police officers have been going into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogating them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns.

The African American community is well aware that the Republican leadership is SELFISH. So when you try and dangle something in front of us like school vouchers, we automatically think about what happens to the children that can't leave the failing school and the loss of money to the school and not that a school voucher means my child can escape.

The African American community is well aware that faith based initiatives has been used to woo the clergy of large black megachurches and influence these ministers that are supposed to be delivering the word of God to deliver black votes. We find it heinous and have protracted arguments within our community concerning those voting for Republicans because they are against gay marriage. We know that we have a strong anti-homosexuality cancer in our community, that marginality has translated into hypermasculinity which has become anti-homosexual and it is being discussed more than ever before.

Finally, The African American community is well aware that civil rights is under attack. We know that the last two heads of the DOJ Civil Rights division weren't qualified, that career civil rights and Department of Justice people have exited because Bush is gutting Justice in America and there was a sneaky suspicion that the whole U.S. Attorneys scandal had to do with folks that wouldn't play ball with this Administration hell bent on destroying America and advancing the Apocalypse.  We remember President Bush joining the University of Michigan affirmative action case and using the King holiday.

There are members of my community, that I know personally, that have a skepticism that ranges from healthy to conspiratorial.  So when the drum beat for war against the sovereign nation of Iraq began, I listened to the skepticism of members of my community without one iota of proof.  I then provided that proof, the prevailing wisdom concerning the unmanned drones and the dispersal of biological and chemical weapons, the aluminum tubes that wouldn't logically be used for centrifuging and that hundreds of weapons inspectors from IAEA and UNMOVIC had inspected hundreds of sites in Iraq and found nothing when the bombing began.  And despite what the blackhearted Ann Coulter said on Hardball yesterday, the weapons weren't found and you can't whitewash the motive of the Iraq invasion to Saddam Hussein.

Citing the global war on terror as the main reason, according to officials, for the decline in black recruits is more cosmetics. The African American community is well aware that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th (despite what Ann Coulter said yesterday, a shining example of the difference between objective and the idiocy and irresponsibility of neutrality in journalism) and Iraq is not a war to eradicate fundamentalists seeking to blow things up here and around the world. The problem the African American community continues to have is that people keep on our heads and calling it rain.

Another example of yellow rain, the economy forecast. It sounds great on cable news as they cite statistics but the reality is that America, middle of the road America, paycheck to paycheck America knows we aren't seeing an increase in wages, that CEOs are, that gas prices are killing us and yet they cited job opportunitiesas a reason for the decline in black recruits when:

Black unemployment rates are usually double the rate of Whites and are higher than the rates of Hispanics. For example, in April 2007, the national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. The Black unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, with the rate for Black males at 9.7 percent.

As to the third reason given to decline in black recruits, relatives of recruits discouraging them. Well our unique history affords us an almost hypersensitivity.  My mother says she sees the faces of her grandbabies on the bodies of the dead Iraqi children. My mother says she sees the faces of her mother and grandmother on the bodies of the dead women in the marketplaces. We have been in ghettos afraid for our children to go out and play. We have known terror. Abner Louima. Amadou Diallo. James Byrd Jr. So you can continue repeating the same tired lines and get met with even more resistance.

President Bush is the biggest deterrent to blacks joining the military.  We remember when President Reagan started his campaign in Philadelphia, MS where the three civil rights workers were brutally murdered; we remember that nod to the white segregationists.  We remember 'welfare queens' and 'soft bigotry of low expectations'. We remember.

President Bush is the biggest deterrent to blacks joining the military. When we take back America, we will see the reversal of this recruitment decline. When we get out of Iraq, we will see a reversal of this recruitment decline.My little brother just signed back up and is in Fort Hood, TX after doing his stint in Iraq. He's ready to run for office when he gets out.