Blog #8

A group that I was apart of that became a community was my last deployment team. We started off in the pseudocommunity because everyone got along with everyone and none had any problems as of yet.  Once we left for predeployment training I knew that this was probably the last time we would see all these smiling faces for awhile. Once we got to Texas we started Physical Training (PT) every morning at 0500, followed by 14-15 hour training days in the hot summer. You mix that with being around the same people 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 2 months and you start to grow intolerable of people.

Stage 2 or "Chaos" insued when people started have different views on the ways we should be going about doing things. Well for example, when it came to how to assault the village for training our senior leaders put us junior leaders in charge. There was 5 of us in charge of about 60 other troops that we had to lead. Well all 5 of us had our own way of doing it and we bickered back in forth until we came up with a general idea we could all agree on. This may have solved our accomplishing the mission issue however it only created more tension between us junior leaders. We started growing shorter and shorter with each other and ultimately came to a point where our senior leaders called us in a meeting and chewed us out. This lead to an emptiness feeling because we felt we let the rest of our team down because we couldn't lead them the way they needed to be led. In the military perception is everything and we didn't feel any lower then getting chewed out by our mentors.

Senior leaders then choose one of our group members and placed them in charge (because he had been in the longest) and said from here on out he's in charge. Although the rest of us didn't like it we all know how to follow orders so it made future missions end up being easier since we only had 1 voice to listen to. This helped the team come together and form a true community because for the rest of the training we knew who was in charge and who was giving the orders. That's the reason why a chain of command is so important because so often everyone wants to be a chief but no one wants to be an indian. Leaders can't make it without the support of the rest of the team.

Blog #7

2 target identities that ill be addressing is gender and race. Being a white male from a upper middle class family, I've lived a life that growing up most dream of. I feel fortunate for that however, growing up i feel it hindered me at times. Growing up in a house with two loving parents that financially were able to offer many things, to others I obtained the "spoiled" stigma. People saw me in nice clothes and thought I was stuck up and that couldn't have been more false. 

Race is an identity that I've been on the wrong side at times. I've been threatened by groups of individuals to get out of a certain area because I was white and didn't belong. Then I come back 2 weeks later to the same place but with a black friend of mine and those same people had no problem with me. Now i'm not ignorant and I know that race equality is definitely and issue when it comes to certain issues but it doesn't exclude any race. Discrimination is something that all races  have to endure as it will never fully go away and is based on that individual in position or empowered.

Gender is an identity and i'll give and example on how it is used in my military career up to this point. Women equality is becoming a bigger issue in the military and is currently aiming for opening special forces up to women. A lot of people have an issue with women in special forces, however I do not. I believe it you can meet the standards that are set in place for that course than you should be able to join. However the issue that is coming to light is that majority of women that are entering the special forces course can't pass the physical standards and are lobbying to reduce the standards. This is an issue I have because the physical standards are set for a reason, if a man or woman can't reach it then they shouldn't be accepted. 

A non identity I would say I associate with would be being male. Equality for men and women still has a little work to do. An example I would like to bring up is the Men's and Women's US National Soccer Team. The Women's soccer team has filed a wage discrimination lawsuit because although they have brought in nearly $20 million more revenue than the mens soccer team, they have been paid about a 1/4 of what the men have earned. This surprised me because you know discrimination happens at small businesses but when the Nations Sports players are being discriminated against you know we still have some work to do.