morrigirl | Education and Military Recruitment Rant

John Kerry said something that was totally true and Bush decided to interpret the remark as an insult to our troops in Iraq, for public image reasons one would suspect.

Well guess what, Dubya? I can interpret Kerry's remark that "those unable to navigate the country’s education system 'get stuck in Iraq'" in a completely different way. The fact that army recruiters routinely target urban and under funded high schools is well documented. They target those high schools precisely because they are filled with A) Low income students whose financial situations may not afford them many decent post graduation choices, and B)Students (like myself, I might add) who have gotten their entire education in overcrowded, under funded, resource deprived schools that have not appropriately prepared them for college level study. Students who, like the financially hard pressed, don't have the resources to attend college. Now, take into consideration that most of these low-income, under prepared students are people of color, and what do you have? The military purposely targeting the poor, under-educated, and ethnic youth to go off to war.

This is institutional racism and classism rolled into one neat little package. I'd say a quarter of my high school class enrolled in the military after graduation because they didn't have the money to go to college, or because they tried college and couldn't handle it. That says nothing about them as individuals. Rather, it speaks loudly to what the government, and society in general, value. That's certainly not the education and future welfare of citizens of color.

So, Dubya, in pointing out what is an obvious truth, I can say that Kerry was really elluding to the military's willingness to target those society deems "unnecessary," for recruitment, and the over arching issue of the under funding of inner city public schools. A problem, I might add, that has not improved during your two terms in office.

Suck on that, Dubya!