Black West Point Cadets Are Under Investigation For Raising Their Fists In A Photo

Recently, a group of 16 black women who were set to graduate from the prestigious West Point military academy posed for a photo in uniform, and raised their fists. Now they’re under investigation for engaging in so-called “political activities” with their gesture.

According to the New York Times, the photo circulated on Facebook and Twitter last week, with critics accusing the women of “allying themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement and sowing racial divisions in a military that relies on assimilation.” The academy is conducting an inquiry, and could bring punishment against the graduating cadets.

Here’s some of the opposition on social media:

https://twitter.com/jh_armstrong/status/729517267340271616

The New York Times also quotes an Iraq War veteran named John Burk, who said the women could have beliefs that are aligned with Black Lives Matter, but that they shouldn’t express them in uniform. People who know the graduates said the gesture was to express “strength and pride,” rather than a political message:

“These ladies weren’t raising their fist to say Black Panthers. They were raising it to say Beyonce,” said Mary Tobin, a 2003 graduate of West Point and an Iraq veteran who is a mentor to some of the seniors and has talked with them about the photograph.

The cadets also have supporters on social media.

This also highlights West Point’s issues with diversity, as described thus:

The elite public military academy, which trains many of the Army’s future leaders, is overwhelmingly male and 70 percent white. The 16 cadets in the photo represented all but one of the black women in a graduating class of about 1,000, a meager 1.7 percent. But the Army has long tried to play down race and gender to create a force where “everyone is green.”

We’ll soon see if these women get punished for their gesture.

(Via New York Times and New York Daily News)