A divisive email circulating the U.S Army is redefining “white supremacy” for the woke men and women in uniform. The email asked military personal to come to race and diversity driven “listening sessions,” and told employees of the base that saying “Make America Great Again” was a sign of “white supremacy.”
The email from July 6, 2020, leaked to Breitbart News, was sent by the Army Missile & Aviation Center’s Equal Employment Opportunity Manager Chaney P. Pickard and told employees at the center on the Redstone Arsenal Army Base in Alabama to come to listening sessions, saying to “see attached timeline” for details.
The email’s attachment spanned five pages of woke-ness including times for the sessions and a pyramid-shaped graphic with a list of conduct that should be deemed “white supremacy.”
The attachments give details of what these sessions would consist of, reading: “Interested and available Soldiers and [Department of the Army] Civilians in the Huntsville, Alabama, Redstone Arsenal, and the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] areas are welcomed to participate in the listening sessions taking place 8 and 9 July.”
Continuing, “U.S. ARMY EQUITY & INCLUSION AGENCY and Assistant Secretary of the Army – Manpower and Reserve Affairs” near the top then including five “Must-Read Articles For Every Leader,” with links.
The listed articles in the reading material are “#1: America is on Fire. / #2: Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protest #3: Your Black Colleagues May Look Like They’re Okay–Chances Are They’re Not #4: U.S. Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism #5: Five Practices and Three Myths that Fuel Inequality.”
On the forth page the indoctrination really begins. It has a graphic outlining seen and unseen white supremacy which includes uttering the phrase “Make America Great Again,” recognizing Columbus Day, and terms like “all lives matter,” or “there’s only one human race,” as well as “calling the police on black people.”
According to Breitbart:
“The full list of ‘convert [sic] white supremacy,’ behaviors which are labeled racist but ‘social accetable [sic],’ reads:
- Calling The Police on Black People
- White Silence
- Colorblindness
- White Parents Self-Segregating Neighborhoods & Schools
- Eurocentric Curriculum
- White Savior Complex
- Spiritual Bypassing
- Education Funding from Property Taxes
- Discriminatory Lending
- Mass Incarceration
- Respectability Politics
- Tone Policing
- Racist Mascots
- Not Believing Experiencing of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color]
- Paternalism
- “Make America Great Again”
- Blaming the Victim
- Hiring Discrimination
- “You Don’t Sound Black”
- “Don’t Blame Me, I Never Owned Slaves”
- Bootstrap Theory
- School-to-Prison Pipeline
- Police Murdering BIPOC
- Virtuous Victim Narrative
- Higher Infant & Maternal Mortality Rate for BIPOC
- “But What About Me?”
- “All Lives Matter”
- BIPOC as Halloween Costumes
- Racial Profiling
- Denial of White Privilege
- Prioritizing White Voices as Experts
- Treating Kids of Color as Adults
- Inequitable Healthcare
- Assuming Good Intentions Are Enough
- Not Challengin [sic] Racist Jokes
- Cultural Appropriation
- Eurocentric Beauty Standards
- Anti-Immigration Policies
- Considering AAVE [African-American Vernacular English] “Uneducated”
- Denial of Racism
- Tokenism
- English-Only Initiatives
- Self-Appointed White Ally
- Exceptionalism
- Fearing People of Color
- Police Brutality
- Fetishizing BIPOC
- Meritocracy Myth
- “You’re So Articulate”
- Celebration of Columbus Day
- Claiming Reverse-Racism
- Paternalism
- Weaponized Whiteness
- Expecting BIPOC to Teach White People
- Believeing [sic] We Are “Post-Racial”
- “But We’re All One Big Human Family”/”There’s Only One Human Race”
- Housing Discrimination”
An Instagram account called “The Conscious Kid” may be the original source for the graphic. The flyer seems to be a ripped-off viral post changed just enough to pass for new, adding several typos. The Conscious Kid’s caption informs readers “white supremacy” is present “regardless of the presence or absence of racial hatred.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) was shocked by the pyramid graphic and said it violated the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees and members of the military from political campaigning in the workplace.
In response to Brooks’ quest for answers for the absurd email, the Army claimed “Project Inclusion listening tour handout included two unapproved pages that were sent out in error and immediately recalled.”
The army released a statement reading:
“The slides – copied from a non-government website – included a word cloud with phrases that were intended to spark conversation; however, the document was predecisional and inappropriate for the discussion. The unapproved pages were in no way used as part of the ‘Your Voice Matters’ listening tour sessions.
“As soon Department of the Army leaders were made aware of these products the Army initiated a 15-6 investigation to determine how this happened. The Army does not condone the use of phrases that indicate political support. The Army is and will continue to remain an apolitical organization.”
Brooks gave an interview on Friday to Breitbart News saying he spoke to Army Under Secretary Jim McPherson but was not satisfied with his explanation for the rogue email.
“He is going to order a 15-6 investigation, and a colonel is going to head up the investigation, and he expects it to be thorough, and once they have the information of who did what when where and why, then they’ll be in a position to ascertain how best to handle this matter,” Brooks told Breitbart.
Adding, “It would be fair to say that Under Secretary of the Army Jim McPherson, who I spoke with, was appalled at the email’s content.”
Brooks has not spoken with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who founded Project Inclusion, which spawned the “Operation Inclusion” initiative.
Brooks is launching an investigation and assured, “Appropriate culprits can then be dealt with appropriately. Appropriately to me means fired.”
“I would like to see everybody with authority over this matter, from commander in chief of the United States Army President Donald Trump on down, to become involved because of how egregious this conduct was,” he continued.
Adding, “It was not only a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, it was also overt racism by the people involved.”
Brooks said email recipients have reported to him that Pickard was not alone in sending the email , making it possible that it was not Pickard’s brainchild.
“My office having personally communicated with recipients of the email, it appears that there were others distributing this racist Hatch Act violating email, not just Chaney Pickard,” Brooks told reporters.
Congressman Brooks said he supports the idea of eradicating racist outlooks, but the email in question was deliberately inharmonious.
“It is one thing for the United States Army to help educate people in order to minimize or eliminate racist attitudes, and I applaud those kinds of efforts. It’s an entirely different thing for employees — particularly those of the United States Army to blatantly violate the Hatch Act and to engage in their own counter-racism.
“In my judgment, what happened here is symptomatic of a much bigger problem that America has where people are, for partisan political gain purposes, trying to divide us based on race, which is something that none of us have any control over,” Brooks stated.
“We’re born with that attribute which is wholly unrelated to our character, our conduct as people, and I would hope that those who are trying to divide us by race will ultimately be held accountable for the racial division that they themselves are causing.”