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Pan-African Student Youth Movement
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Wounded Soldier: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
STAMP Out Racism!
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STAMP Out Racism!
Survivors Describe Reality Behind "Equal Opportunity" Promises
by Chris Lombardi
Ellen Kwame, a Liberian native, was progressing well in her flight training at Whiting Naval Air Station - until she resisted being hazed and abused by her flight instructor, who had taunted her for "not flying aggressively enough." The moment she filed a complaint, the retaliation began.
First she was ordered to "get help" for her accent, and then told that her short braided hairstyle, though recognized by Navy regulations, was "too unfamiliar." What followed was a stream of consistently negative evaluations, subjective judgments by the very men who had been harassing her. By the time she learned she was being "attrited" (dropped) from the training program, she had come to a second realization: that her departure would leave no black students in her squadron at Whiting.
Ellen called CCCO, and found STAMP -- Survivors Take Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel. "It's like Black Tuesday around here," she said. "Every Tuesday there's been some black student appealing a negative eval, and getting thrown out of training." As this article goes to press, the outcome of Ellen's case is unclear: what's clear is that Ellen has found a source of support in STAMP, which in the year since its formation has grown to include hundreds of survivors of assault, abuse, discrimination, and retaliation. STAMP was formed as an outgrowth of the G.I. Rights Hotline, a partnership between CCCO and Air Force veteran Dorothy Mackey.
Other survivors of racist abuse (some names changed to protect survivors' privacy), who've contacted STAMP:
Renee Stone. Renee, an active-duty lieutenant in Louisiana, was subjected to a mental evaluation when she came forward, after the major who raped her threatened the young Black woman that he would call his "Klan buddies" if she ever told. (The major has since been allowed to retire quietly, at full pay, despite having failed a lie detector test when asked about the crime.) Renee has since been transferred to another base, where her command has initiated a new investigation.
Rick Poyner. Rick was a private at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when he and two friends - one of whom was Latino - were attacked from behind and beaten by military police, one of whom wore a swastika tattoo on his arm. While hospitalized,
Rick also heard comments from other MPs that his attackers were "skinheads." When a congressional inquiry into the incident began, the congressional liaison was told by Lt. Colonel Curry at the Pentagon that the incident was a consequence of a fight at a party, and that the accused had a tattooed "Indian religious symbol." "I don't know where the Pentagon got this version of the story," said Rick. "The swastika symbol was used over many regions in the world for centuries, including in India. We need to know if that 'Indian religious symbol' really is a swastika. If it doesn't resemble a swastika, why don't they say so?"
Debbie Johnson. Debbie was a captain at Fort MacPherson in Atlanta, Georgia when she was raped by a fellow captain who she had known for three years. "He broke my belt, threw me down, put his mouth to my mouth so I couldn't scream..." Stunned, she had not yet decided to report the assault when her attacker came back to repeat the rape: this time she fought him off, and was rescued by the arrival of a girlfriend. Ultimately, "CID gave him my testimony, and he used it to claim I was a jilted lover." Shaken, Debbie went on to suffer harassment while on deployment in Germany, which was dismissed by investigators because her commander was the same race as she: "They said there's no such thing as black-on-black harassment."
Rahumel Robinson. Rahumel was a classmate of Kelly Flinn's at the Air Force Academy, and his career was going swimmingly until he discovered a pattern of procurement fraud in his unit, and tried to call his command's attention to the waste of millions of dollars in government funds. For his trouble, he found himself subject to disciplinary action and his career stopped: when he protested, he found himself categorized as an "angry black male."
Brenda Coffey. "He was Mr. Clean," Brenda says of the officer who raped her at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix in the mid-seventies. "Blond hair, blue eyes . . . and here I was a black woman, in an office where I was being told all black people descended from the devil." The racist and sexist subculture of the Air Force was especially virulent at the North Pole, where Brenda was only the fourth woman to be stationed: one NCO threatened to beat her up if she didn't sleep with him. "I got out at that point, and I know PTSD was already beginning to kick in . . . but economics forced me back into the Air Force." Racism, ironically enough, protected Brenda's personal safety at her final duty station, Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, where "I wasn't blond and cute . . . I was this separate species to them, black enlisted female." Still, "Wright-Pat was like being in a men's locker room," and Brenda became concerned for the health and personal safety of a young personnel officer by the name of Dorothy Mackey Triplett. Only in 1997, long after they were both discharged, did Brenda learn what had become of Dorothy - when she first heard of an organization called STAMP.
"You know, the people who've charged selective prosecution over the past year -- they're not wrong," says Dorothy Mackey. "Most of the offenders reported in our case histories are white, yet these are handled under the table with administrative action, if any action is taken at all. The trial of Sergeant-Major Eugene McKinney trial was a fascinating illustration of both. McKinney was singled out for prosecution, and then given a slap on the wrist, which tells women in the military only one thing: you have no protection." STAMP, working with the G.I. Rights Network, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, and its own rapidly growing network of survivors, is pressing for fundamental changes in the Violence Against Women Act which would transfer jurisdiction for abuse and discrimination from military to civilian authorities. In the meantime, "we need to keep exposing the truth," said Mackey. "The equal opportunity they advertise is a lie - it's an unequal opportunity to be abused." |