Thursday, March 27, 2008

Obscuring social class by blaming colleges

Yesterday I blogged about a common tactic of some to blame colleges and universities for being anti-military and blaming college students for being ignorant of things military. I provided an example of such a statement. I alerted the author that I had commented on his blog here. You can read his comment on yesterday's blog.

In short, I stated that it is not the colleges, but rather the class background of the students (hence of the parents) that is creating the anti-military actions or the ignorance among the students.

Today, I asked my mostly freshman class, there were 100 in attendance today, the following: I asked them to raise their hand if any of the following were true: 1) they were either currently in the military, had been in the military, or were planning to join upon graduation; 2) whether they had any relatives who were currently serving in the military; or 3) any of their friends (not acquintances) were currenlty serving in the military.

88 of them raised their hands.

The fact is the military and this war falls disproportionately on the backs of the lower, working and middle classes. This is a fact that many on the right do not want to discuss much less even acknowledge. And too many on the left act as though those in the military have the options that the upper class do.

For what it matters, my father, his brother, and my cousin all served in the military. My uncle, and cousin were both lifers. My father in law served during Korea and my wife's cousin recently retired, a major, from the Air Force.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Response posted at: http://poligazette.com/2008/03/27/when-people-blog-about-other-people/#comment-36356

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