Army-Navy game: White Power hand symbol appears to be used during pregame broadcast

I've stayed on the funny and witty side of this but racism is very serious of course. As above, racism didn't start with this president and will continue after he's out of office. My 26 years spanned the 70s through the mid-2000s. There were racists then and I know there are now. A few years ago when my son checked into the 1st Marine Division, he was handed a command investigation before he even found out where the head was located. He thought he was being blanked upon, but with the way it ended, he knew that his sea daddy had something to do with it. He found extreme cases of hazing, harassment, and assault and battery with smatterings of racism. There were numerous NJPs and courts martial. Marines were kicked out. Toward the end he was driving and walking with his head on a swivel and sleeping with one eye open. The commanding general was accused of undue command influence as a tactic to have cases thrown out. I won't mention names but this is easily found on your favorite search engine. The CG turned out just fine and many feel he will be the next commandant.

I grew up in the Deep South and still look and sound like it. I could pass for the twin of Nathan Bedford Forrest even. Or Josh Brolin. Anyway, I'm in my 13th year of teaching in very diverse schools. People who look like me have trouble enforcing the dress code and other behavioral issues because it is felt by some students and even some colleagues that we don't have the moral authority to tell a minority what to do. This came out a few weeks ago at a professional development session. It got ugly. Another southerner and I just sat back and watched with our heads down. No crossfire wounds for me. I've earned my stellar minority cred that I have from the students and faculty that know me; and they know how good I treat the students. It's a struggle though to maintain that good standing due to today's environment.

I don't have a dog in this fight or even on this website really. Heck, my son wasn't Academy or ROTC. He went to five different colleges and is a six week wonder from Brown Field. The purpose of my essay is (a) my students are working on an assignment and I'm pretending to be catching up on my grade book which I really should be doing and, (b) I just want to say I believe in the youth of today, both those like y'all's super kids who attend the academies and like the majority of my students; the ones who struggle daily just to get by in a crazy world rife with divisiveness and confusion. I know I feel the struggle. It must be double tough on them.
 
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Yes, any and all “isms” that exist outside the military can also be found within the military if you look deep enough. I had firsthand experience dealing with most of them including white supremacy and black power groups.
yep, Camp Lejeune in the late 70s was a war zone, metaphorically.
 
Yes, any and all “isms” that exist outside the military can also be found within the military if you look deep enough. I had firsthand experience dealing with most of them including white supremacy and black power groups.

Yes.

Both enlisted recruits and officer candidates carry their culture, beliefs, assumptions, biases, unwittingly or not, into uniform with them.

Over my career, I dealt with several ugly cases - people spewing sheer nastiness. Including some majority USNA midshipmen, who thought it was ok to have friends at home send them racist jokes, as long as they didn’t tell the jokes around mids of that race. It was flagged in their computers.

For this particular case of the hand signals at Army-Navy, I am inclined to believe circle game + age-related bonehead poor impulse control. Why am I inclined to believe that? They’re mids and cadets, it’s a known game for that age range, some clown in front of a camera, they don’t yet have fully ingrained that when you’re in uniform in public, people are going to watch you more closely, for good reasons and bad. That’s what I believe, and my beliefs are formed from my own biases, assumptions, experiences. There is a small reserved speck in my mind of “could be the bad thing,” because I have seen it up close, and not just in “the old days.”
 
Lets speculate: The investigators will review all of the suspects' social media & any white supremacist groups' websites that are active in suspect's home areas. They will subpoena cellphone records, interview roommates, squadron friends, & academy staff personnel. Reach out to HS principals, teachers, review their HS yearbooks, etc. Last is to interview the suspects.

Scenario #1: If all the above is negative & suspect says it was the Circle Game then you would have an unsubstantiated allegation. Unsub'ed meaning that there is not enough evidence to either confirm or deny the allegation.

Scenario #2: If of course, the suspect says that it was indeed a racist gesture, it would be a founded allegation.

Scenario #3: Lastly, if there is evidence that points to racist behavior & the suspect denies it &/or the gesture, or the suspect makes false, misleading statements, then the authorities involved have a decision to make.
In this scenario, the evidence would have to reach a point for the authorities to determine that the gesture was racist. Since this was on national TV, I would assume that bar would be pretty low. False/misleading statements would naturally be a ground ball.

Also there are 2 separate branches conducting simultaneous investigations. Will one branch reach a decision while the other reaches a different outcome; or will both reach the same result? Possible but doubtful, but interesting.

In my experience approx. 85% of investigation's were classified as Unsub'ed, (not hard to figure out). If that's how this one plays out, the authorities will again have decisions to make; educate, discipline verbally, letter in personnel file, or classify as kids having fun?
Do these academies' practice "just culture", a popular model in healthcare?
Or will the decision be to disenroll in order to set an example to the 4,000 other cadets/mids (& satisfy the PC crowd)? It seems anything can have a political component these days.

As the Zen master said, "We'll see".
 
USNA opened a preliminary inquiry which will determine if there is more to investigate.

The preliminary inquiry (PI) is a quick and informal investigative tool that can be used to determine initially whether a particular incident is serious enough to warrant some form of JAGMAN investigation.

Command options. Upon reviewing the results of the PI, the convening authority (CA) should take one of the following actions - particular to this case:
(1) Take no further action.
(2) Conduct a command investigation.
(3) Convene a court or board of inquiry.

Ref: JAGMAN, JAGINST 5800.7F
 
My favorite parts about this situation are 1) the massive resurgence of the game and 2) reading explanations of the rules online. Frankly, we all sound like idiots when we try to explain it.
 
USNA opened a preliminary inquiry which will determine if there is more to investigate.


Just glad to not be the person tagged with this one! And for those exploring attending USNA... this is why Mids all take Naval Law for the JO. You will do investigations. This one will probably go to someone more senior. We usually had 2-6 investigations ongoing at any time in my units. Part of JO life. They happen at more senior levels to, but they are more rare and usually are involved with a more senior person often in a sister unit.
 
Just glad to not be the person tagged with this one! And for those exploring attending USNA... this is why Mids all take Naval Law for the JO. You will do investigations. This one will probably go to someone more senior. We usually had 2-6 investigations ongoing at any time in my units. Part of JO life. They happen at more senior levels to, but they are more rare and usually are involved with a more senior person often in a sister unit.
My son has done two of them.
 
One of my sons buddies that picked up with us at the airport last night is Army. FIRST thing they talked about was this thing.

Lots to learn from this:

-nothing is done in private anymore.
-as MIDS (cadets, etc) eyes are always on you when in public.
-intentions aren’t always conveyed properly
-don’t call attention to yourself (IMO) on national TV.

We don’t get re-do’s in life! Look how easily something can blow up.
 
Part of life as a JO to do routine prelim inquiries and JAGMAN investigations.

As an O-5 and O-6, I did several for other commands, when an officer from outside the command was wanted for certain heavyweight cases. As an O-5 “stashed” in between PCS jobs for 4 months, I was assigned to SECNAV IG (Inspector General) to do the preliminary investigation on several cases in Navy recruiting commands, outside my career field. Yes, the cases involved sex (CO and XO were involved, so a senior outsider was needed), fraudulent use of govt vehicles, bias in administrative conduct hearings, other higher-level allegations. That little stash tour was eye-opening but excellent training.
 

When people in the public eye speak out against the unchecked abuse of power (imo) of the ‘media’ these days, hopefully they will swing back to responsible reporting.

It’s completely irresponsible to create, or regurgitate, whatever they want. What happened to “investigative reporting?” Thankfully, I believe our youth are less susceptible to the current ‘fake news’ media climate as they have grown up in it.
 
Some of the best advice I was ever given was to always give the person the benefit of the doubt. Since communication misunderstandings are usually the source of conflict if you assume positive intent it helps with resolution most of the time. Society would be in such better shape if everyone took this approach. It's 99.99% likely those cadets were jacking around playing the circle game or some other riff-raff and early reports are that is exactly the case. There are more important issues today to put our energy towards.
 
Been playing the circle game with friends and family since grade school. I’m damn near 50 now. Society has gotten ridiculous about making something out of nothing. My daughters HS was told they couldn’t do it anymore. Some of them were doing it in team pictures (not official ones) just like for their instagram or something.
 
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