How the armed forces are attempting to entice black youths and what we can do about it
Will Murry
Art & Life Editor
For a lot of today’s American youth, the question of how they’re going to pay for their post-secondary education is becoming harder and harder to answer. For a lot of America’s lower class black youth, the military sometimes seems to be the best, or only, answer. I’m here to tell you that if you’re young and black, the military is the last place you want to be, because they don’t give a single care about you.
In 1966, political activist Huey P. Newton spoke out in response to the drafting of young black men into the Vietnam War: “We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.”
I quote Newton not to state the obvious but to show that the situation remains unchanged. To our government, recruits are just another number to their roster, just another statistic.
The recruiters will swear up and down that the military is trying to do the youth a favor by paying their way through college and giving them an “opportunity” they would have never had before, which in a way is the truth. But opportunities, hopes and dreams for the future mean nothing if you die on whatever front lines the government plops you on.
To their credit, they’ve come up with a fool-proof plan for an endless supply of able-bodied recruits and it’s been 100 percent effective. They show these young eyes more zeros than they’ve ever hoped for and top it all off by dangling a fat bonus check in front of their face and they take it immediately because they think they have nowhere else to turn
for help.
The military have preyed on a whole generation of young, concerned Americans just trying to do what’s best for them and their family. It’s absolutely deplorable and there are better alternatives out there. FAFSA, grants and plenty of minority-based scholarships will help you pay your way through school without having to sign your life away to the very system that wants you dead in
the streets.
Before anyone says “I’m going into ‘x’ branch, they don’t treat people that bad,” yes, they do and it doesn’t matter to them what branch you want to be in. They’ll put you wherever they need
cannon fodder.
Like history has shown time and time again, the American government, and its military, doesn’t care about black youths. Not then and not now. Fight the status quo by refusing to be part of a system that takes advantage of the least privileged group of young people.
