KeKe Palmer was Right. The Military Should Join Us! Pt. 1
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place!
I witnessed a young black national guardsman, while on duty, mouth, “I’m black and I’m proud” joining in with the chanting of a peaceful protest. He looked like he was in pain. He was in turmoil and was internally conflicted. He took an oath to serve the United States of America and in the midst of a revolutionary uprising and he is also a black man in America. Though he may not agree with the orders, President Trump has placed him, and many other men and women in the military and police forces all over this nation, into one the most mentally and physically draining positions they could ever believe they would be facing in 2020.
In a perfect world, those two wouldn’t be polarized because as an American citizen, no matter your race, color, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, class, status, etc., you would still be protected and respected as such. A black man or woman joining the military or police force wouldn’t have to grapple with the idea of being seen as a traitor by their community or feeling like they are discarding a part of themselves to serve.
But this is no utopia. This is America, the land of the disillusioned.
This is the land where the first African Americans who fought for the flag couldn’t vote and weren’t afforded the “freedoms” that they were fighting for. The land where when back from war, and out of the uniforms, they were hunted. Sometimes, even while still in uniform. This is the land where the first African American police officers could not arrest white people. Now, though African Americans have the right to vote and black officers can now arrest white people, I’d challenge you to consider if progress has truly been made. If you feel like progress was made, I’d implore you to listen to Malcolm X’s speech where he talks about progress, he says:
“If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t begun to pull the knife out, much less try and heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”
In the US military, the LaVena Johnson story exists. She was a young black US Army Private First Class who was found murdered in her tent in 2005. In the US police force, a black police officer who accidentally shoots a white citizen is quickly brought to justice, tried and sentenced. Justice in the land of the bamboozled is quite prejudiced. Equality is a figment of our imaginations which is paraded about and dangled in our faces in movies like dollars on a string being pulled away just out of reach. “Oh, you’ve gotta be quicker than that.”
No one is more disillusioned than the members of the armed services, both military and policeman.
We love a man in uniform. It’s designed to look good and there’s power that comes with it. People respect the uniform, the badge, the title. They are revered. Yet, if the wrong person is in the position to give orders and directives, they are feared. With systemic racism and injustice running rampant in the United States and globally, both services are seen collectively as tyrants protecting only the rights of certain segments of society. Whether the war is one of classism, protecting the elite’s desire for global dominance, or racism, keeping the African American community and other communities of color in positions of servitude and disenfranchisement, service members have been used as tools of destruction. But, they are citizens too. The laws they enforce taking away our right, takes away theirs too. Once a person realizes, you are not your uniform and stop seeing yourself as separate from those you swore to serve (depending on how you look at who they really serve) they will see that they are doing more harm than good and only hurting themselves and the ones they love.
If only they could understand that they don’t have to enforce unjust laws, or follow unethical orders, if they could collectively see that they are the governments last line of defense of upholding this horrendous system and that they can be the nail in the coffin to end all of this if they would just….listen to Keke.