Assuming that link works, it’s a self-shot video taken by African-American activists at the Lincoln Memorial that day. Around the 1:07:00 mark you can see some of the Covington Catholic boys assembling nearby, and the activists and some of the boys begin exchanging words. This draws a crowd, including a lot more Covington Catholic boys, who then begin chanting stuff in unison (looks like mostly the stuff they chant at football games) in what appears to be an attempt to drown out the activists. This continues for a bit, and then Native Americans appear and insert themselves between the boys and the activists…presumably in an attempt to calm the situation and provide a distraction. That mostly works, until the Native Americans attempt to advance up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, their intended destination, and are blocked by the boys. This is the part of the video which is being played all over the media, and while it is inexcusable, it doesn’t quite tell the whole story.
All that said, it doesn’t change how disrespectful the actions of the boys were, or the fact that racism is a justifiable term to apply here. It also shows in even more detail the complete lack of any intervention on the part of the adults who were supposedly chaperoning the trip. There are literally dozens of opportunities where an adult could have defused the situation had they simply done anything other than stand there doing nothing.
It was fun today, sitting down with my son and watching the videos of the Covington Catholic boys, and trying to talk him through it. Navigating this shit with a teenager is so much weirder than anything I ever dealt with when he was younger during the Obama administration.
Now I’m seeing casual racism and misogyny in his social media. And since I have Trump supporters in my family, and his virtual stepdad is one, I have to tread lightly.
I mean, my kid is smart. So he could see what was up. But still I felt the obligation to be careful because he has to navigate similar waters, and I want him to make up his own mind, while making it clear where I stand. It’s a weird line to walk.
So far I’ve had to talk about what grabbing pussy means with him. How white supremacy worked its way back into the mainstream. How a foreign power messed with our presidential election. How paying off a pornstar is okay with my Evangelist mother. And now…tonight…late…I had to deal with his anger that his friend from middle school (last year) just got deported.
It’s pretty much as you said. He compares the Black Israelites to the Westbro Baptist Church people, spouting some hateful stuff, and that there were only four of them, and he stepped in to try to diffuse the situation before anything happened.
The more I read about the Black Israelites, and the more video surfaces of the event itself, the clearer it becomes that these guys are downright crazy. They pretty much hate everyone. They hate white people, they hate Jewish people (who they believe are NOT the actual Israelites), they hate other African-American people who don’t believe in their cause, they hate the government…
Apparently the Covington Catholic students were gathering at that spot because that is where their bus was picking them up. Their MAGA hats made them targets, and words were exchanged. That’s when Mr. Phillips’ group stepped in and tried to put themselves between the two groups.
The whole situation is chaotic and confusing. The only thing that is clear is that Nathan Phillips, American veteran and Native American advocate, is a genuinely good guy who tried to do the right thing and ended up in the center of a media frenzy.
I still say the adults from Covington Catholic could have done far more. They should have told the boys to ignore the Black Israelites, and/or sent adult members of the group to ask them to leave the boys alone (not that it would have worked, but it was never tried). They could have then moved the entire group further away, and left an adult behind to redirect the buses to the new location of the group. They absolutely should have forced the boys to move apart and allow Mr. Phillips and his group to pass through…as had they done that, there wouldn’t even be a controversy.
The Covington Catholic boys and adults are not without guilt here, but the more information that comes to light on this, the less convinced I am that it is a clear cut case of overt one-sided racism.
We’re all delicate Southern Snowflakes down here in Virginia. Except that the sight of a single snowflake makes us all drive like numbskulls, so maybe we’re delicate water droplets.
I don’t think we have the facts to make that claim,
Allegedly there is video show Mr. Phillips along with a fellow tribe member yelling at the students “you stole our land and similar comments”
I saw the 2015 instragram picture where Mr Phillips was involved incident on college campus where he made a claim of racial harrassment. Again Phillips was the person who went to the campus to start the protest.
Most importantly his actions don’t past the smell test. But his own account in the Detroit Free Pass, he approached the students (not the other way around) to quote defuse the situation. There are lots of ways you can attempt to defuse a situation, but in no known universe does banging a drum loudly inches from somewhere face qualify as a defusing a situation,
I don’t completely accept the Covington’s youth account (the Tomahawk chops are insulting) but the video supports their side more than the “adults” side like Mr. Phillips
Eh, I think that the Maga dorks were being pretty annoying, but I’m having a hard time squaring what I originally believed had happened. I’m not seeing a really good explanation for how Phillips’ ended up banging his drum in that kid’s face. I don’t think the kid walked up to him and stared staring him down, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to say, “Oh, well you should have backed off when he came up to you with his drum.”
I think part of the original reaction I had was that the kid had that smug dickhead look on his face, but if Phillips was the guy who walked up that close to him with his drum, then I can’t actually find some fault with the kid (although I suspect he is in fact a dickhead).
The black israelites though? Very clearly they were total pieces of shit.
With the dust on the situation settling somewhat, nobody looks good. I think #1 I blame the chaperones of these children. I also blame them for being purposely inflammatory, there were people there to demonstrate, and they are interrupting that. Can’t blame people for getting mad at you for basically blocking/goading on protestors. And most of that blame should be on the adults that didn’t have the kids back off or move aside or whatever. It is also true that because of their school shout chanting, they pissed off some native american activists and made them get confrontational.
The information we are getting is that the kids were shouting some MAGA bullshit, they say they were chanting school fight songs. The videos don’t show any MAGA chants. It is probably likely they didn’t shout chants like “build the wall” as a group, maybe some kids shouted it, with some other chants. Who knows.
But that doesn’t exonerate those individuals or their parents. They were being confrontational as well, and to me, wearing a MAGA hat itself is a trigger. When I see someone wearing a MAGA hat the first thing I think of is Charlottesville and proud boys and white supremacists getting into fights. So, when you wear that hat, to me, you are either with those people or don’t completely disagree with their neo-nazi rhetoric.
But in the end, aren’t we happy that nobody got hurt? That a bunch of groups protested, shouted at each other and walked away in the end? A native american veteran got to have a spotlight on the issues that he was protesting for? A bunch of MAGA chuds and their parents looked like idiots. (especially that kid’s mom)
I am just disappointed at some of the liberal twitter band-wagoning that happened. That sort of thing stirs up a lot of bluster over a minor incident. It was all about scoring easy points, dunking on some charged photography and videos, slapping eachothers backs over how much better we are than the other guys, and how backwards the super white private school kids are. It is social media popcorn.
It is another distraction during this damaging administration’s worst point. I don’t give a shit about what some (likely) racist chuds did at a protest where the only thing damaged were vocal cords and egos, I care more that our president is holding the government hostage over a useless border wall.
I can’t see assigning blame to anyone more than the Black Israelites.
Those guys were there PURELY to pick fights with everyone. They were just shouting at everyone, the native americans, the catholics, everyone… just screaming at them and telling them they were all going to hell. They were like westboro baptists.
They’re installing some kind of underground cable to connect some telecom boxes across the courtyard in our subdivision, and the poor dudes were out this morning having to dig in this weather to put some cable or piping in. I can’t imagine how unpleasant it must be to dig into that frozen ground!
They should not have been wearing those hats. It’s a political statement that means a lot to a lot of people. If they were not prepared to endure insults, they should not have gone.
That’s what I’ve been reading too. I’ve never heard of this group, and they’re not very big.
None of this explains why that kid is a couple of inches from an adult’s face and there are no other adults around these kids anywhere.
No matter how it started, those kids are being aggressive towards the Native American(s), and they shifted their anti-abortion trip into statements about race very quickly.
