Tar Baby Outrage Racism and Corruption at the Redstone Arsenal

At the meeting on Friday morning, you made the comment, “I don’t want the tar baby pinned on me.” I was the only African American in the room at the time of your comment. I feel it was inappropriate, disrespectful, demeaning, offensive and a racial slur. The remark caused me emotional turmoil and was very upsetting. This remark highlights the need for sensitivity training of all managers on cultural and racial awareness.

“It shocked me that that it came out of his mouth,” said Ms. Blackburn, referring to Colonel Craig Naudain. “When he said it, I had my head down, reading. I’m surprised I didn’t drop something. This is 2002. I was extremely upset.”

Blackburn later brought an NAACP representative (not her sister) to a meeting with the colonel, who was accompanied by two Black females. Blackburn says she still can’t figure out why the two non-witnesses were there. (To vouch for…what?)

The veteran engineer soon learned of another, documented Tar Baby incident. “There turned out to have been three incidents in three different offices. It’s not an isolated case,” she said. Further investigation turned up a fourth, unreported case, in which the Black woman involved “did nothing.”

For a primitive doll that can’t walk or talk, this Tar Baby gets around.

What about Redstone’s military mission? “I don’t feel that they take advantage of our knowledge,” said Blackburn. She thinks that Tar Baby has become the slur of choice at the arsenal “because that’s the way they look at us. They don’t want us to say anything. They just think they are stuck with us. There’s a lot of expertise that’s not being utilized because of the color of our skins.”

Al Roach met the Tar Baby last year, at a meeting of Redstone engineers and contractors. A Black woman was also present when Roach’s now retired supervisor dropped the verbal bomb. “That’s the first time I ever heard it used as a racial slur,” said Roach. Later, the civilian boss admitted that the term is part of his vocabulary. He insisted that, at the time, he didn’t think he’d said anything wrong. It was all quite routine.

“That’s why they do things that discriminate,” said systems engineer Roach, matter-of-factly. “It’s a good old boy and blacklist environment. It’s a way of life.”

Roach collided with white privilege three and a half years ago, when he formally complained of being downgraded. He described a familiar pattern of complaint followed by reprisal. “I’m a prime example of the blackball list,” he said. “But I like what I’m doing. I’m not going to let anybody run me away.”

After graduating from Alabama A&M, Roach earned his masters at the University of Minnesota. He’s worked for Honeywell, Xerox and other private corporations, but was drawn to Redstone partly by the lure of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Through DARPA, says Roach, “the military spends millions to encourage inventions to improve weapons systems, but Blacks are locked out of participation.”

The U.S. Army doesn’t want to hear about Roach’s potential innovations, despite his eagerness to participate in the War on Terror.

“My expertise is in buying weapons systems like the Patriot missile system,” Carolyn Lucas announces proudly. She is fully aware of the value of her experience. With a masters degree in contracts and acquisition management, certification in three career fields—contracting, program management and financial management—and 31 years on the job, Lucas understands the value of many things. The cost of training her to become a senior team leader amounts to at least $150,000 in taxpayer money, she estimates.

She also realizes that her skills count for little in the Redstone old boy network’s scheme of things.

Lucas, chief operations officer for RAM, has been a GS-13 since 1991. Her troubles with management began, she says, around 1996. “I got blacklisted for speaking out for other people,” she laughs. “I have always been vocal. I’m a minister, so I’m concerned about people.”

Passed over three times for promotion to GS-14, Rev. Lucas finally filed the first of her seven complaints in 1999, against the Space and Missile Defense Command. The other six grievances, including four against the Program Executive Office for Tactical Missiles, involve blacklisting and other retaliation for the initial complaint. “Any time you speak up,” she says, “the word gets around and you become forbidden fruit.”

A white woman with only 15 months as a GS-13 won the promotion, and the agency prevailed at an equal opportunity hearing. Lucas say the EEO judge later described the Army’s promotions process as “a sham.”

As one might expect from a money management expert, she is careful to explain her situation in terms of the investment squandered by the military. Lucas was among 25 people chosen from across the entire Army to be “trained and groomed to assume senior executive positions.” Many of her classmates are now GS-15s and virtually all made GS-14, she says. Lucas is still stuck at 13.

Once her complaints began, “They shoved me into a corner with nothing to do. For a whole year my supervisor gave me not one work assignment.” There was no performance to evaluate, of course, just as in the case of Dr. West.

According to Lucas, the Army has tried to negotiate a settlement with her. She told them: “You can’t settle with me, because this affects all minorities, it’s not just about me. This is systemic. They have no standards” when it comes to promoting Blacks. “This area reeks of racism. They basically do whatever they want to do. ”Now, “I don’t care if I ever get a GS-14.”

Meanwhile, Lucas says a white female GS-15 “who doesn’t have a day of college” is managing a tactical missiles budget that Lucas estimates at $500 million to $1 billion.

Lucas has given lots of thought to the effects of racism on military readiness. “I think the impact is monumental. The old boy system is a direct threat to our national security.

“They use our government tax money to protect managers who are blatant racists. Incompetence is being inbred in the system. They get people who will let the contractor get away with anything. You’ve got people in here who don’t even know how to compute percentages.”

Because of incompetence, says Lucas, “it’s inevitable, some people are going to get hurt. Most people in the infantry are Black. If a weapon doesn’t work…”

Nobody has confronted the minister with the term Tar Baby—yet. But, it wouldn’t surprise her. “That’s all part of the subconscious subculture that prevails in this area. They think of Black people as troublesome, bothersome, useless.”

When the dust had settled over lower Manhattan, happy-talk newsreaders and wishful thinkers of all kinds spoke of a rekindling of national feeling in the wake of tragedy. The World Trade Center disaster might bind Americans together “again.”

The basic flaw in such thinking should have been obvious. White racism is the great divider of American society. The racists must change their behavior. We have seen little evidence of that; at Redstone Arsenal, quite the opposite is true. Indeed, appeals to patriotism seem to arouse racial passions among the good old boys, causing them to regress to their grandfathers’ patterns of language and behavior.

It is as if Race and Nation are the same things to these men, just as the two notions were inextricably linked in the minds of white Americans long dead.

Tar Baby was also thought to be dead and all but forgotten. Is it coincidental that the grotesque racial caricature has been given new life precisely at this time of war fever?

When George W. Bush blew his bugle, dividing the world into “us” and “them,” Redstone managers decided that African Americans were not part of “us.” They are acting out this logic, engaging in the wholesale destruction of careers and undermining national defense in the process.

The situation requires the attention of no less than the Commander-in-Chief. Unlike the near-daily terror alerts, this is no false alarm.

Condoleezza’s Complaint & Paratroopers in the Basement: Connie’s image and the Venezuelan coup

Did the Green Party Betray Black America: by Dr. Jonathan David Farley, Guest Commentator

A Law That Gives Racists Something to Fear:by Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Fogg, Guest Commentator

Commentaries in previous issues :

Condoleezza & Geraldo, a Fine Pair: The Role Models’ Burden

Hard Right Cash Defeated in Black City – This Time
Ultra-Conservative Favorite Cory Booker Loses in Newark, New Jersey

Newark: The First Domino? – The Hard Right Tests its National Black Strategy

Fruit of the Poisoned Tree: The Hard Right’s Plan to Capture Newark NJ – April 5, 2002

A Letter from Harvard: “How to spot a “Black Trojan Horse.” Dr. Martin Kilson, Guest Commentator

Reparations Part One: The True Value of Some Land and an Animal

The Living Wage Movement: A New Beginning – Bread, Power and Civil Rights in 19 Languages

Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s Statement on the Events of September 11: The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle.

Make The Amendment: How to Get the U.S. Government Out of the International Drug Trade

Psychologically Unfit: The U.S. Can’t Handle the Death Penalty

Linquistic Profiling: By Patrice D. Johnson, guest commentator