About two years after I retired from the Air Force (around 2001 timeframe)....I was continuing to work for the AF, as a contractor. One day, we had this incident occur with an airman in the shop, who'd posed for a picture for the base newspaper. In the pose, she had some finger gesture that the photographer had suggested which was really the simple old-fashion 'OK' finger deal.
After the photo was published and the paper came out.....suddenly the base social affairs office got entangled in the airman's business. You see....this 'OK' gesture had been assigned now to meaning some type of gang-symbol, and meant 'white power'.
There was some type of meeting....this young female, her First Sergeant, two or three social affairs geeks, and some officer from the Base Commander's office. The airman had grown up in some Arizona town....fairly naïve (even by 1990s standards), and was totally shocked at the amount of hype this photo had triggered. Eventually, they all decided she was that naïve.....that she didn't know much of anything about white power, and wasn't a gang-member.
After she came back to the office, I asked if there was some official way of this white power gesture being done. No....just the plain old 'OK' gesture was enough.
For about an hour, I sat there....in a bit of a daze, and just made a mental note....never-ever show an 'OK' gesture to anyone.
days....showing the 'OK' gesture, and the news media had to go and defend Joe.....that he didn't mean 'white power'.
The trouble is.....you don't know. Maybe Joe is all into 'white power', and he knew precisely what he was doing. Maybe he is like me, and the whole 'white power' thing just missed him in the 1980s/1990s.
Around this 2002 era, I brought this up to some guy, and he laid out the various gang signs.....probably two dozen of them. I sat there and felt....well....from the baseball crowd alone, there's probably five or six hand signals you'd use....which might be gang-related.
Did the news folks explain this to Joe? Does he understand this now? His response? He probably did a frown, and indicated to them that these are all 'Joe-power' symbols, and they need to get with his gang.....to understand the whole thing.
It's all ridiculous but it's kinda how that that airman felt in that meeting....she meant it as 'OK', and the fact that she was 50-percent Latino.....didn't really matter on 'white power'.
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