10/19/08 #5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njmjOg1GUDY#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfwDmLk_iQ&feature=related


“Well, if you are gay we don’t take you. YOU ARE CONSIDERED UNQUALIFIED…”

This statement is from an interview that was held in 2007 and was the reaction of a military recruitment officer, via an email conversation, after being notified of Corey Andrew’s sexual orientation. According to this interview the military works on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” system and is more than willing to sign new soldiers to fill the spaces left by the bodies of dead soldiers that are being shipped back to the U.S. awaiting burial. It sounds like it is ok if you are gay or lesbian, just so long as you keep that to yourself and tell nobody about it, but if you were to “come out of the closest,” so to speak, then you are automatically unqualified to serve your country.

The email transcripts that are being used as the vocal point of this interview venture off into another form of inequality that plagues this country from the inside and out. Not only is Andrew’s sexual orientation in question but the fact that he is African-American became an issue for the military recruitment officer as well calling him something along the lines of un-american.

“…You go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo, limbo, wango, tango and…prance and run all over the place half naked there and practice your gay morals over there, that’s where you belong…

I’m reminded of a Malcolm X speech where he talks about how black people were essentially stolen from their homes and how, “…we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.” I find it ironic how centuries ago, Americans took part in the slave trade, they captured Africans and locked them in chains against their will in order to put them to work on the fields or in the homes. And in the days since slavery was abolished, those same Americans who worked so hard in bringing African people here would love to see those ex-slaves return to their original continent.

10/05/08 #2

Specific reasons for any rise or decline in enlistment numbers of the armed forces are not clear to me. This blog is not going to solve any major mysteries; it’s merely my take or even my opinion about the things I see. According to:

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2005/ArmyRecruitmentGoalsEndangeredasPercentofAfricanAmericanEnlisteesDeclines.aspx

African American enlistment numbers were around twenty percent in 2000 but have been on the decline and in 2005 it was around fifteen percent. Any number of reasons could be attributed to this decline and anything I say is just a speculation. Soldiers in the army are most of the time on the ground engaging in close physical battle with the “enemy.” It seems to me that the closer you are to the enemy, the chances of you dying rise. Based on the limited data from this article it doesn’t seem to be very attractive to people, in this case, African Americans. It certainly doesn’t interest me in anyway shape or form. The army has “depended on blacks to meet its recruiting goals and reenlistment targets.”

I don’t know the reason why we’re at war and I think that only a select few actually know the real truth behind this so-called war on terror. I have to be honest; I’m not a fan of getting shot or shooting somebody over a beef that I had no personal part in starting. As long as this war has been dragging on, it’s not surprising to hear that people are losing interest in joining the army. Although this same article has a graph showing an ever so slight rise in navy enlistment in 2004, which may or may not indicate a shift in popularity as far as the major branches of the armed forces are concerned. The sailors in the navy are generally lower on the list of active personnel to be deployed onto the front lines, and in a war such as this one which is on land; it might just be a safer way to earn a living while still serving this country.