Leaked Memo to West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen From Major Consuelo Antoinette Martinez Regarding the "Raised Black Female Fist" Old Corps Photograph Incident

Authors

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School

Abstract

This satire responds to the recent United States Military Academy ("USMA" or "West Point') Investigation sixteen African American female cadets who took a photograph of themselves holding up their fists. This work of legal analysis and of the imagination takes the form of an investigatory memo written by afictional Latina West Point official to the (very real) West Point Superintendent Lieutenant General Robert Caslen. In it, I study the legal underpinnings for the investigation, which center on certain Department ofDefense regulations forbidding political activity on the part of military service members. I reveal the race and gender absurdity that cuts through the military and also through those elements of society that called for the cadets' court-martials when their photograph was distributed via social media in the Spring of 2016. N.B.: All citations to communications between the "author" of the piece and West Point authorities and alumni are fictional.

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Criminal Procedure | Education Law | Law | Law and Race | Military, War, and Peace | Torts

Recommended Citation

Yxta M. Murray, Leaked Memo to West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen From Major Consuelo Antoinette Martinez Regarding the "Raised Black Female Fist" Old Corps Photograph Incident, 23 Cardozo J. Equal Rts. & Soc. Just. 149 (2016).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cardozoersj/vol23/iss1/6