US Army Platoon Allows Racism For One Day Every Week. Brawls And Suicide Rated Good for Morale

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Ah, Racial Thursdays. The long-lost Hill-Billy cousin of Casual Fridays; both allow you to let your true personality shine, though where the latter stops at the exterior, the former allows people to get more than… skin-deep. All good fun, as long as that true personality you’ve always wanted to show the world was a closeted bigot that just wanted to run free, hair blowing in the wind…. minorities trampled in your path….

According to an Army Times report, a platoon in the US Army has allowed soldiers to lob racial slurs at each other for one day of every week. Racial Thursdays, as the free-hate day is known, was revealed by a Fort Wainwright Staff Sergeant. The platoon has since been placed under investigation.

“When I first got to my unit, someone said we should do ‘Racial Thursdays’ because it’s been a tradition,” the soldier, who requested anonymity, told the Army Times. “It’s something they made up where you can say any racist remark you want without any consequences.”

Majority-white unit gets free-reign to insult any and every colored individual, all justified because this would boost “morale” somehow….. Sounds like an incident report waiting to happen. Wonder how they define morale, does being assaulted with racial slurs for 24 hours a day, once every week really improve the morale of colored soldiers though? Unless minorities got to use baseball bats to knock out their one-liners, I doubt it was an even playing field.

The platoon sergeant had tried to prevent it from going on, but to no avail. “It’s degrading,” the anonymous soldier continued. “We’ve had soldiers almost fight over the crap that’s going on here.”

In one awesome morale-boosting incident, a Latino soldier had been so badly bullied that Racial Thursdays almost became Free-For-All Thursday.

Let’s be honest, nobody needs a day of the week to beat on minorities, particularly when racial tensions are at an all-time high. The military seems to disagree with that sentiment however, because they have also targeted Black Women for a specific set of hairstyle restrictions (the rules were withdrawn following swift and heated backlash), allowed “white supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinhead groups” into the Army’s ranks( which Reuters has linked to the murderous rampage of Wade Page, former army soldier who murdered six Sikhs at a temple in 2012).

And what about the case of Danny Chen, a Chinese American who had committed suicide because he was persistently taunted by men who were supposed to have his back during the deadly conflict. According to New York Magazine, he was stationed at Fort Wainwright right before his deployment…. Now we have a death because of Racial Thursday. I’m sure platoon morale is through the roof.

“Treating all soldiers with dignity and respect is something this command takes extremely seriously, and when there are any indications that those values are not being followed, the command will absolutely make inquiries, conduct appropriate investigations and take action as necessary,” U.S. Army Alaska spokesperson Lt. Col. Alan Brown told the Army Times. Yeah, good luck with that. Pardon me if I’m just a tad skeptical, what with the Army’s amazing track-record so far and all.

Source: http://mic.com/articles/113310/why-the-u-s-army-doesn-t-need-racial-thursdays-a-special-day-for-racism?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

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15 COMMENTS

    • I thought the exact same thing immediately. I’ll actually have to scroll up to read the rest of the article because a comment had to be made on that.

  1. This is what I mean when I say this website has become whiny and liberal. Racial Thursday is not a day for white people to mistreat black people; its a day in which members of EVERY ethnicity can playfully insult each other. If you’re gonna commit suicide for something stupid like being insulted, you don’t belong in the army in the first place. Rather than be ridiculously biased in every article you people write, go back to being nonbiased and truthful. Its a better way to gain support from people like me who aren’t weak-minded and hop on every bandwagon that condemns offending anyone.

    • @Alex bartha
      do you even know how obscene you sound and how immensely insensitive and uneducated you sound. There’s no way being racist can be playful. is nothing playful about the things that have happened to any culture in things that people have endured at the hands of small mind evil bigotswhat’s next is going to be two days out the week. Maybe even 3 me while we have kids getting shot for no reason little 8 year old boy playing with BB guns in the park even though he shouldn’t have one with a cop would jump out the car after only 2 seconds and shoot the boy dead without even trying to get him to lower the gun fake gun at that before killing him in cold blood this is the type of stuff that makes people riot. this is the type of stuff there’s nothing funny about anything like that and the fact that you think that it could be playful really concerns me you should look take a look at yourself.there isn’t shit funny about being a racist there isn’t shit funny about being ignorant and there isn’t shit funny about things One race for no apparent reason I could go on and explain to you the depth of racism and educate you on racism and where it came from and how it still present to this very day obviously its a joke now until a black person punches a racist ass perso in the face then it’s a salt.but I’m not going to rap

      • do you even have humour? when i was in school i was in a class with only me and a black guy, which was my best friend. we both would call eachother racist names and stuff like that just to pass time.

    • Are you serious? “If you’re gonna commit suicide for something stupid like being insulted, you don’t belong in the army in the first place.”

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Danny_Chen

      “Military investigators found that Chen was the target of ethnic slurs and endured physical attacks at the hands of his fellow soldiers before his death.[3][8] Chen had been physically and verbally abused by his superiors who singled him out for being Chinese-American. This occurred on a daily basis for six weeks.[7][9][10] As the only Chinese-American soldier in the unit, he was singled out, endured taunts including racial slurs like “gook”, “chink” and “dragon lady,” assigned excessive guard duty to the point of exhaustion, made to do push-ups while holding water in his mouth, put in a “simulated sitting position” and kicked by other soldiers using their knees, among other abuses.[11]
      He was allegedly pelted with stones by fellow soldiers and forced to crawl across gravel until his suicide.[12] On September 27, 2011, a sergeant dragged Chen out of bed and over 15 metres (49 ft) of gravel, leaving visible bruises and cuts on Chen’s back. Although the incident was reported to Chen’s platoon sergeant and squad leader, it was not reported to superior officers.[11] On October 3, 2011, the day he died, other soldiers forced him to crawl on gravel for over 100 metres (330 ft) while carrying equipment, as his comrades threw rocks at him.[13]”

      • “on a daily basis for six weeks” meaning it wasn’t only on Thursdays, so wasn’t related to or caused by racial Thursdays.

        • Ru thick it may not have been about the weekly racist fun, of course this has everything to do with this story racism is racism once a week once a month or even yearly STILL THE SAME, jeez stupid people really do give me a head ache, I don’t think your brain is intelligent enough for his kind of debate SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD STAY OUT quite clearly your not a very smart person you’ve proved that with you very silly juvenile post

    • Agreed to an extent. It would be interesting to find out more about this from other perspectives within the platoon, (though, I doubt any of them would be willing to comment while under investigation). Words are words and sometimes being offensive is just plain funny. I’ve worked with mostly black and latino individuals in usually kitchen settings at restaurants and I guarantee we’ve made equal to or more disgusting and outright abysmal race-related jokes than this platoon probably did. When things are laughed at, even in the most obscene tenses, they lose their power to hurt. Foul words, bad jokes, and the like – especially among men in a men-predominant setting tend to be a morale booster.
      This however does not apply when the jokes aren’t just jokes and people are being truly harassed based upon their ethnicity. That isn’t acceptable. I would not be surprised if the staff sergeant who leaked this was white himself, with a guilt complex or “morality” hangup.
      Like I said, I wish their was more access to real accounts of this from the individuals who were there but sadly they will all be sealed or advised by lawyers not to talk about it.
      Grow the fuck up America.

    • You are a stupid fuck srry if any one gets afended but they got in the army,you get in and then speak but ur still nothing intill you do and thank you to the men and wemen out there severing and maybe racist people should be allowed in the Military

  2. Im fuckin shocked at how casual people take racism DISGUSTING, anyone who thinks even a playful bit of racism is ok your gone in the head, just like those dick sucking racist so called soldiers

  3. How can you live with ya selves thinking any sort of racism is ok it’s a huge deal when PEOPLE ARE DYING take a long hard look at ya selves and if you come away with the same view I’m sorry but your demented normal people don’t think this way its quite disturbing how relaxed some of you are about this, hardy har har har it’s well funny when someone gets racially beaten then commits suicide I thought this kind of story would change people’s minds on these matters, and what was it that was said oh yea basically ya saying if you join the army it’s all good to have a bit of racism and to man up is the basics behind what has been said I agree you gotta be tough to make it but that’s not toughening that’s torture, the next time any soldier sez anything racist just remember you gotta trust some of the men you’ve been hating on to save you at some point Your face will be a picture when you see the guy you hated on just sit there and let you take a bullet coz he/she thought why should I tell em it’s coming mark my words this sort of scenario will happen why would you wanna help, see if racism is funny or not that important then for gods sake your ment to be helping each other out, this is for any racist of any colour

  4. What the hell happened to the military? It use to be full of badasses. Trained killers. ( yes, killers…thats what militarys do) Now its a bunch of soft pansises who are afraid to get their feelings hurt. Let the enemy capture one of todays soldiers and they would have no clue how to handle it because they have been trained to be sensitive, thoughtful pushies. They would cave in a second. Bring back the badasses.

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