Posted on Jun 29, 2016
SSG Roderick Smith
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I see links on RallyPoint all the time. Brexit, politics, Red Cross posters, officer-involved shootings... it used to be that if you were a conspiracy theorist, you were the only weirdo in the room. Now, it's like having tattoos... everyone's got 'em. Why does the general public latch on to racism as the root cause of so many issues?
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SFC Opsnco
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Short answer... because it is easier to blame others. Long answer... see below.

In today's society it is easy to be hurt by words. Words are scary and they hurt just as much as sticks and stones do. Additionally, with the invention of smart phones and the accessibility of mass media nothing can he hidden anymore. We have become a society that if something is not to our liking then we can yell and scream to get the attention we think we deserve. And if we yell loud enough or long enough then someone is going to give into us. We are nothing but spoiled children lacking any discipline. Before these inventions it was much harder to bring attention to the masses as quickly as it is now. Now we are able to loudly voice our opinions to a much larger audience with little interference.

I am an immigrant, not a child of immigrants or a second or third generation American. I am an immigrant. My parents and I came to the US in 1982 when I was 6 and brought me along for the ride. I didn't become a U.S. citizen until 2006. I have worked hard to make it where I am and I never once cried racism or any disadvantage. I have an accent, I have trouble pronouncing and spelling English words, I have occasionally had difficulties with other American "norms". But, I overcame. Nothing was handed to me like so many others. I attribute this hard work to giving me the resources to work beyond my difficulties to achieve something for myself. I could have let the elementary school kids that made fun of me for wearing glasses or for my accent or for not being American get the better of me. A teacher told me and my parents that I was better suited to work in manual labor because of my lack of my academic skills. I worked to make something out of what I had. I love the military and one of the reason I love it so much is because I believe with every fiber of my being that it is the only organization that has come closest to MLK's "I Have A Dream." I have risen to where I am not because I am male or female; White, Black, Hispanic, Asian etc. I have risen to where I am not because I was born into the right family or went to the right school. I have risen to where I am not because of someone I or my family knows or because we contributed to the right political candidate. I have gotten here because I worked my butt off. Don't tell me "Can't" because I CAN and don't tell me "Don't" because I WILL. We are responsible for ourselves and our actions not someone else. Only I can limit myself.

It would have been too easy for me to give in and cry racism and blame others for my lot in life. The current movement of only certain lives mattering is something truly disturbing to me. It is in essence saying "I matter or you matter but, this other person does not matter." What is wrong with this picture? I think I matter. I think you matter. At the end of the day we are all human and we all bleed the same color - red. We need to take responsibility for our actions and quit blaming it on something other than the root problem - us. It is always easier to blame someone else other than ourselves. Until we, as a society, quit doing so it will just cause the division to grow ever wider. We need to toughen up and quit getting hurt over over what others say of us.

It can summed up by the following words available on a poster on Ranger Up (dot) com. In full disclosure I have edited it for content as I wouldn't want to hurt someone's feelings by having put a curse word on this site. Actually, I find it ironic as I just ranted on this in the first paragraph.

Most people never have to do anything truly hard their entire lives. Their idea of overcoming adversity is to pull an all-night study session, or to work a little overtime, or not be able to afford the leopard-skin pants they’ve always wanted and actually have to save for something. Rather than get the instant gratification for their every need not being attended to. Kids aren’t allowed to lose so there is a trophy for everyone. Hurtful words are now being equated to physical violence, which is comical. We go to war and only .45 percent of the population answers the call over eleven years. There is no rise in taxes to cover the two wars we were engaged in so the average citizen doesn’t suffer at all.

Increasingly, we’re told that we are the smartest, most handsome, most amazing people in the whole wide world. Even if we haven’t done a g**damn thing to earn that status.

In short, people have no idea what sacrifice looks like anymore. Then when their given the tiniest window into the military world and they see kids reaching physical exhaustion, getting yelled at, getting emotionally brought down, they just see cruelty. They don’t see the value, because they don’t know what we know.

That toughness is earned. It has to be earned. You can be naturally smart and naturally athletic. You can be born with every advantage. But when you’re getting shot at, none of that matters. All that matters is the work you’ve put in, the skill you’ve acquired, and your willingness to fight though it all and never quit, no matter what.

In that moment and that moment alone, can you realize the futility of the participation trophy. It’s first place or nothing.

Warriors are not born. They are made through hard work, suffering, and sacrifice.
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CPT Special Forces Officer
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4 mo
Someone needs to do just a little homework.
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SFC Gene Garcia
SFC Gene Garcia
4 mo
I concur with your comment and let me ad that the media helps perpetuate racism because it makes the story .
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SFC Joseph Kennedy
SFC Joseph Kennedy
4 mo
Snow Flakes and Pussys, where have the real men gone?? If you don't like something just delete it or change the damn channel...
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SSgt Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst
SSgt (Join to see)
4 mo
Well said!
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LTC Telecommunications Systems Engineer
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Because it is way easier to blame racism than to do a self reflection.
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Sgt Bob Leonard
Sgt Bob Leonard
8 mo
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney - Of course I'm trying to tell you something you don't know, but you're not hearing it.

Everything you've accomplished in your life (and I acknowledge that you have done well) you've accomplished as a white man. You don’t know, and you could never have known, what it was like in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s to be a black person in America.


“…(labor unions) shaped much of the development of Detroit's labor market, especially during World War II. Over 50% of Detroit's laborers belonged to a union by 1950… With so many employees involved in unions, manufacturers were more prone to listening to their demands (which) led to "economic security and employment stability" for unionized laborers.”

“Despite these benefits, however, labor unions were less beneficial toward people of color, especially African Americans. Their decisions often allowed, or even reinforced, discriminatory hiring practices by prioritizing white males compared to African American workers.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Detroit


This is speculation, of course, but, in addition to being a white kid raised in a white community, perhaps your dad was a union member. If so, he, and you and your family, enjoyed the security of him having a regular job, with pay and benefits secured by union membership. Security not available to Black people.

Maybe you and your friends went to movies at The Cameo, or even just hung out in the parking lot. A current map of Detroit shows that there are at least a half dozen parks and open spaces within easy walking distance of 18186 Russel. Maybe that's where you hung out. Whether you did or didn't do those things doesn't matter. What matters is that you could have. It was a different story if you were Black.

It's certain there were no Black families in your neighborhood. It's certain there were no riots when your family moved into your home at 18186 Russell. That's because the Detroit Housing Commission(DHC) didn't allow Blacks in your neighborhood. You weren't responsible for that, of course, but you certainly didn’t suffer from it.



Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.S. federal housing project, caused by white neighbors' attempt to prevent Negro tenants from moving in. Sign with American flag "We want white tenants in our white community," directly opposite the housing project


“On February 28, 1942, Black families attempted to move into their new homes in Detroit, Michigan, but were met with violence and intimidation from white mobs and were ultimately denied entry to their homes.”
…..
“…the city authorized Black families to move in starting February 28, 1942.”

“One day before, growing crowds of local white people marched through the housing project. On move-in day, only a few Black families braved the harassment and intimidation. Some were struck with rocks. Police responded by halting the moves and arresting more than 200 Black people and only three white individuals.”

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/feb/28


“…white housing development could be funded by the federal government and the mortgages on the homes would be eligible for backing by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which from 1934-1968, blocked most African Americans from being able to access these low interest loans for home mortgages.”

“The federal government, by backing home loans to white homebuyers, while refusing them for most African Americans, picked winners and losers and became the primary segregationist institution in housing, which helped to widen the already existing racial wealth gap, and created a new wealth gap between white working-class families who received low interest home loans, and African American working-class families who were locked into paying rent…”

https://www.newdetroit.org/a-mighty-long-way-how-black-people-moved-in-out-and-around-detroit/



The Sojourner Truth riots: “On February 28, 1942, as the first black families moved into their houses, black supporters and white opponents flooded the streets by the thousands. Passionate protest turned to visceral violence as 40 people were injured, 220 arrested, and 109 held for trial—all but three were black. White segregists utilized this violent eruption as an established precedent to detrimentally affect Detroit's public housing for decades. Influenced by the riot, DHC established a viciously oppressive mandate for racial segregation in all public housing projects. Utilizing the language of the National Associate of Real Estate Boards, city officials vowed that their projects would "not change the racial pattern of a neighborhood". White community groups maliciously utilized threats of a repetition of Sojourner Truth Riots as ammunition to shoot down political support of public housing. City officials strongly wanted to avoid bloodshed and therefore surrendered to their elitist demands.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth_Project



“(While growing up I saw) them, the police in their cars, but I do not understand them, what role they play in the neighborhood. They do not speak to us or help guide us across streets. They are never friendly. It is clear not only that they are not our friends, but that they do not like us very much…. And then there comes a day when they pull up near our apartment building. They block the alleyway along the side of it.
The alleyway is where my brothers hang out with their friends and talk sh*t, probably about girls and all the things they probably never have done with them. Monte and Paul are 11 and 13 years old and there are no green spaces, no community centers to shoot hoops in, no playgrounds with handball courts, no parks for children to build castles in, so they make the alleyway their secret place and go there to discuss things they do not let me in on. I am the girl. Nine years old, I am the little sister banished behind the broken black wrought-iron gate that tries, but fails, to protect us from the outside world.”

“It’s from behind that gate that I watch the police roll up on my brothers and their friends, not one of whom is over the age of 14 and all of whom are doing absolutely nothing but talking. They throw them up on the wall. They make them pull their shirts up. They make them turn out their pockets. They roughly touch my brothers’ bodies, even their privates, while from behind the gate, I watch, frozen. I Cannot cry or scream. I cannot breathe and I cannot hear anything. Not the siren that would have been accompanying the swirl of red lights, not the screeching at the boys: “Get on the f***ing wall!”

When They Call You a Terrorist

https://archive.org/details/hsb.eng.ebook.002/page/n19/mode/2up?view=theater




REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS
[aka The Kerner Commission]
SUMMARY OF REPORT
INTRODUCTION

The summer of 1967 again brought racial disorders to American cities, and with them shock, fear and bewilderment to the nation.

The worst came during a two-week period in July, first in Newark and then in Detroit. Each set off a chain reaction in neighboring communities.
.....
“This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.”
.....
“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.”

“Legislative successes at the federal level with the (1964) Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were not reflected in the daily lives of African-Americans facing police misconduct, economic inequality, segregated housing, and inferior educations.”

“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
[page 1 of 26]

http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf





You said…

“I Attended Public Schools Right Straight Through The 8th GRADE, And I Ain't Done All That Bad For Junior High School A DROP OUT..
I Became Self-Educated, And It Was NOT All That Easy....
EXCUSES Only Go So Far, THEN Ya Have To Get Off Your ASS And DO Something!”

… and that’s true, as far as it goes.

Yes, you overcame a lot. Dropping out of school in the eighth grade, and all the hurdles you had to overcome because of it, was a choice you made. What you miss is that it’s not that easy to get off your ass and do something when someone with power and authority knocks you back down on your ass every time you try to get up. That's no excuse, that's fact.

Chronic police misconduct, economic inequality, segregated housing, and inferior education because of the color of your skin were not choices and they aren't excuses. They’re reasons.
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A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
8 mo
HOLD ON ::"Yes, you overcame a lot. Dropping out of school in the eighth grade, and all the hurdles you had to overcome because of it, was a choice you made. What you miss is that it’s not that easy to get off your ass and do something when someone with power and authority knocks you back down on your ass every time you try to get up. That's no excuse, that's fact.
~~~~~~
I Didn't Exactly Stress My Butt Over ANYTHING.; I Simply Did What Was Necessary And I Admit It Was FUN, Because I Was Doing What I WANTED To Be Doing.. ..
And To Become Successful At ANYTHING, Takes Some Additional Work, Risk And The Willingness To FAIL, And Stat ALL Over.. And I DID.. Before Having A Successful Business, I Had At LEAST 3 That I Recall Were A RESOUNDING Failures.
In Fact ONE Of Them Lasted SIX MONTHS With ZERO Results.
YA ~ Ya DO Gotta Work At It.. ~ Really, NO SH*T.~.
~~~
Chronic police misconduct, economic inequality, segregated housing, and inferior education because of the color of your skin were not choices and they aren't excuses. They’re reasons.
~~~~
NAW.. B.S., Those Are USED To Make Ones Own Excuses For Being A Failure...
OH ~~ SO FULL Of Holes, A Truck Could Drive Through Them.... Simply Tossing Out The Ole Race Card & Whining "I Couldn't Do "XXX" Because I'm Black & Discriminated Against Because......." Then Get OFF Your Ass And DO Something Instead Of Spending Time Making EXCUSES For Why You Couldn't Or Didn't... .. And It's More DIDN'T Than COULDN'T... In Most Areas Of Life, We ALL Have The SAME Opportunities;
It's WE Whom Decide Whether Or Not To Do The Necessary Things.... You Either DO Or You DON'T..... But It REALLY Is Up To Us Which Direction To Take;
AND, BTW The WILLINGNESS To Take The Responsibilities Which Go Along With It....
Please TELL ME, Which "AUTHORITY" Actually Kept You From DOING Something.?
HERE: #1.. Blacks Have The HIGHEST Drop Out Rates,
The LOWEST # To Further Their Education,
HIGHEST % In Prisons And Jails.
FEWEST "Fathers"Actually Active In The Family,
And The Lists Damn Nearly Endless:
And ALL Are SELF-INFLICTED.......STOP BLAMING ~ START DOING!
~~ I'm DONE~~
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MGySgt Senior Enlisted Advisor
MGySgt (Join to see)
7 mo
Exactly
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SMSgt Thor Merich
SMSgt Thor Merich
14 d
SA Siera Hatchett - If you truly believe that, then I pity you. What a horrible way to go through life, not understanding human nature at all. Your misunderstanding of history is astounding. The basic fact of human nature is that most folks want to be around others that are like them. It doesn't have to be based on color or race. It could be likes and dislikes, culture, hobby's, things we have in common. It has always been that way. It doesn't mean folks are racist.

This country was founded by white folks who were fleeing the oppression of other white folks. How is that racist? Once they got here, did they conquer others? Absolutely, it's been that way since the beginning of time. One group of people taking stuff away from other folks. It's happened on every continent literally since the beginning of time. White folks beating on other white folks, Africans beating on other Africans, Asians conquering other Asians. Very few times in history has it actually been about race.

The way to stop racism is to first clean ourselves up. The term Racism has been overused to point where no one understands the true meaning of it. Using your definition of Racism implies that everyone (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc...) is racist and everything folks do is due to race. That is a very narrow view of the world.
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SFC Retired
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Because in todays society, people always look at the problem and not for a solution. But to cry racism over every little thing they see or hear, to me, is a crock of you know what.. who has time to protest? I have a job and a family to take care of.. I don't have time to be racist. I love my fellow brothers and sisters with whom I have served.
To me, the best thing about being in the military is that no one cares who you worship, who you love, the color of your skin or how you choose to live your life, just so long as we can count on you on the battlefield.
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A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
8 mo
MSgt Earl King - ...
As Tough As It IS... The Best One Can do, Is IGNORE The BS, And TAKE CARE Of The Rest ....As BILL GATES So Honestly Put It.
~~ "Life ISN'T Fair....Get USE To It." ~~
So MOVE Your Ass....
And If YOU Want Anything To Change In Your Life, YOU Have To Do It.
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MSgt Earl King
MSgt Earl King
7 mo
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney - Really; is it really that simple? Just wave that magic stick and everything will be ok!! And you quiot Bill Gates ?
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A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
7 mo
MSgt Earl King -
Well, You're About 50% Correct Because Most Of The Cold,
Hard Facts Are Boiled Down To This: ~ Whether We Like It OR Not..~.
~~
"IF You Have A Problem And CAN Do Something About It,
Then DO IT.~~~~ IF However, There's NOTHING You Can Do About It;
Then The BEST Thing I'd Suggest Is; You Learn To Live With It In PEACE, As There's NO OTHER Logical Choice.
~~
It Rather Takes Us Back To The Realization; We DO Have Choices; Perhaps NOT Exactly The Ones We Wanted, But We Must Make One And Go On Living As Well As We Can.....
And Even THAT Has A LOT To Do With Our Attitudes.. .. Not So Much As WHAT Happens To Us, But HOW We Handle Them.....That Can MAKE Or BREAK Your Day, AND Your Life. Right Along With Being Successful OR Being A Failure.... And It Really IS Up To Each One Of Us! ~~Can Anyone Suggest Any Other Ideas?
And If You're Not Successful, Ask YOURSELF "Why:?..
There ARE No Escape Holes. ..It's The End Of The Road.. So, Now-What Wii YOU Do?
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SSG Freddie B Graddy
SSG Freddie B Graddy
6 mo
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney - But we can get rid of the ones who pop their heads above ground. No need to leave them there.
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