RACISM MADE HIM STRONG; WE’LL MAKE HIM AN AMPUTEE

And, speaking of the impact of military service on minority communities, Professor Cindy Williams, who teaches political science at MIT, and keeps careful track of military recruitment trends, says the Army is having trouble maintaining the quality of its recruits, and that they are having particular difficulty getting “high quality” [recruiter-speak for high school graduates] African-American recruits, largely because of parental  lack of support for young people in that community joining the military.  Given the large proportion of African-Americans in single-parent families, that should probably be translated as lack of support among Black mothers for turning their kids—especially the ones who manage to graduate from high school–into cannon fodder.   Getting an African-American boy through high school is not an easy task these days, and one can understand why a mother who has accomplished it would be reluctant to send her son off to get blown to bits on some Middle Eastern highway or byway.  Recruiters are saying that, while signing up a young person used to require 14 hours of sweet-talking the young person and 4 hours of sweet-talking his parents, the ratio is now reversed.  The kids may like the idea of military service, but the parents are getting really skeptical. 

 

Red Emma