SC Congresswoman publicly apologizes for labeling Servicemen racist

South Carolina Congresswoman Mandy Powers Norrell (D) spoke out on Twitter on Dec. 14 after she saw several West Point cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen making the “OK-sign,” during the airing of a Navy-Army football game.

“Three separate candidates making the white power symbol on television,” Powers Norrell said on Twitter. “Wonder what the culture is like for the cadet in the front. There’s no excuse and he and other minorities there shouldn’t have to deal with such a cruel and disrespectful environment.”

After posting her comment on Twitter, Powers Norrell received criticism by many who labeled her accusations as “smearing” and “disrespectful.”

The OK-sign is formed by making the thumb and forefinger touch in a circle and the other fingers are outstretched, but it can also be interpreted as the white power symbol.

An internal investigation by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point concluded in a statement issued on Dec. 20 that there was no racism involved. The servicemen instead were playing a child’s circle game or a “Sophomoric game,” CBS reported.

This led Powers Norrell to post an apology on Twitter on Monday night, with a copy of a letter to Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams of the U.S. Military Academy and Vice Adm. Sean Buck of the U.S. Naval Academy. She also said she wrote each of the conscripts involved that she had lashed out at a personal letter that she did not publish.

“I hope they can learn from this moment—as I have—that words, gestures and symbols matter, and that they may mean different things to different people,” Powers Norrell, daughter of a U.S. Navy sailor wrote. “Also, I want to take this opportunity to earnestly apologize to your institutions for some of the words I used in publicly describing the environment surrounding the incident as potentially ‘cruel and disrespectful’ to minority members of the service,” she wrote in the post.

Not because of threats and harassment from Twitter trolls, but because it’s the right thing to do: pic.twitter.com/p9bnXg1htg

— SC Representative Mandy Powers Norrell (@MPowersNorrell) December 23, 2019