Muddy Waters and the Eagerness to Be First
I’m sure you’ve seen it. There’s an article posted from some website. You get to the end of the article and look at some of the comments, and usually one of the first couple of comments is some clown who just says, “First!”
I don’t know why people do it. Do they think that there’s a group of people just waiting around for new articles to pop up? Is there some sort of secret society in which you gain more points by commenting first on a post? Or are some people so competitive that they feel like that have to be first in everything — even in the most mundane things?
I’ve noticed a lot of times that we see something similar in news reporting. Sure, the reporter isn’t just standing at the scene shouting, “First! First! First!” But maybe it’s not all that different. I do recall seeing multiple times news outlets talking about being first on the scene. Of course, in the rush to be first, things can get left in the dust… like the actual story.
Viral Videos and Incomplete Information
This last week has been a fascinating exploration of confirmation bias, the desire to condemn and the complete inability to have patience and see the whole picture.
Of course, I’m talking about the scene that played out in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the confrontation involving students from Covington Catholic High School, participants in the Indigenous Peoples March and the Black Hebrew Israelites.
I’ll admit that when the initial video exploded all over my Twitter feed, I was among those who experienced frustration and anger in what I was seeing and in the initial reports that were coming out.
When I first saw the two-minute clip, what I saw was a smirking teen who never had any real problems in the world. The superiority behind his smile was painfully obvious. He just looked like a privileged white kid that was staring down an elder. The other kids’ jumping around to the beat of the drum, hollering at the scene unfolded piled onto that image. I saw a bunch of sheltered, self-absorbed, stupid kids who had no respect for anybody, and were totally unaware of the world. Perhaps that is what I was supposed to see.
Age of Surveillance
As time passed, more videos began to surface. Welcome to the age of surveillance — where there is always a cell phone with a video rolling somewhere in the vicinity.
Longer videos started going around that showed more of the confrontation, and from different angles. Suddenly, the events surrounding that confrontation were not as clear cut as they were the previous afternoon.
The inevitable arguments began on Facebook comments everywhere. People jumping to condemnation; others to defend. Somewhere, in the midst of it all, was the truth, but it wasn’t as obvious. The blame no longer appeared to be one-sided, though, that didn’t stop anybody from making it so.
A small group of Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI), who never even appeared in the initial video, were seen yelling at the students, saying despicable things. Calling the boys names that I won’t repeat here, but have been widely heard and seen by now. In one video, after the high school students walked away, this group continues berating and speaking hateful words.
We see the students chanting songs; later, we find out that they are school spirit chants. The claim is that they had permission from their chaperones to begin doing it as a way to counter the negativity being shouted at them from the BHI. It is a reasonable and understandable claim — drown out the words of hate with words of school spirit and pride.
We also see Nathan Phillips, the man leading the Indigenous Peoples March, who is also at the center of it all, walk up to the group of students, chanting and playing his drum. Phillips claims that he was trying to dissolve the tension that was mounting between the students and the BHI by getting in between them.
In one of the videos, taken from a different angle from the initial one that came out, the teenager (Sandmann) doesn’t appear to be smirking the whole time. In fact, at one point, one of the Native Americans can be seen arguing with another student, saying how white people should go back to Europe. When the student continues with the engagement (with some strange argument about Pangea and how all people trace their roots back to Africa), Sandmann looks back at him and tells him to cut it out.
People have talked about how the students were disrespectful of Phillips and the peace song he was chanting, and certainly, you can see some of that in the video. However, what you also see is a lot of students standing around, clapping to the beat of the drum. Clearly, they have no idea what is happening; they are just taking in the scene.
Finding Blame
A lot of what I have seen and read over the last several days is people trying to place blame on one side or another. I think that says a lot about who we are as people. We think that blame has to be one-sided. But, having watched a lot of the videos from many different angles, I’m not so sure everything is so obvious.
Many of the teams were wearing MAGA hats. Yes, this obnoxiously plain red hat with the words Make America Great Again has come to symbolize a lot in our society. Whether it is what the students meant or not, the MAGA hat has become a symbol of those who side with Donald Trump, those who ignore the racist comments he has made, those who accept the unverified and downright false statements that come on a daily basis.
Now, context is important, right? These are teenagers from a Catholic high school who just attended the March for Life, a march that has become increasingly political over the years, often including messages from people like Vice President Pence. So, I don’t think it is any surprise that they would be right-leaning in their political thinking (as much as high school students think about politics). Frankly, especially in Kentucky, Donald Trump is popular, and high school students tend to lift up what is popular and idolize it — even when they shouldn’t.
In some of the videos, some of the boys can be seen doing a lazy “tomahawk chop” while the chanting and drum beating are taking place. Is this a racist action? Certainly. Of course, it is also one that you will see at a Florida State football game or during an 8th inning rally watching the Atlanta Braves. It doesn’t excuse the action, but it does give us some understanding as to why it was happening in the first place. For better or worse (frankly, just worse), it is part of our culture. Certainly a part that needs to be removed, but it’s still not uncommon.
Now, also watching some of the other clips, it could be argued, and I think rightfully so, that some of the boys weren’t taking the situation seriously and were mocking the events that were playing out in front of them. Of course they were. They are teenagers. Teenagers mock everything, especially things they don’t understand. Again, it doesn’t excuse their actions, but it does explain them on some level.
If Phillips wanted to diffuse a tense situation, as he suggests, then the question we need to ask is why does he approach the students? The primary source of the tension to begin with seems to be coming from the BHI, who were shouting terrible things at anybody that was gathered around. Why wouldn’t Phillips approach them instead?
These are the kinds of things that I am seeing and asking as I read and watch more of the reporting around this event.
Who is to blame? Everybody involved has some culpability. Yes, that makes for a much more complicated and messy narrative, but it also makes for a more truthful one.
What Does This Event Teach Us?
I think the biggest lesson we can learn from this whole situation is that we need to not be so quick to judge. We need to hold off until we have a better idea of the whole picture. The next day, I saw a whole lot of people retracting and walking back on what they initially said about the situation in the first couple of hours.
I think the reason why there was such an outrage in the beginning is also because of the MAGA hats. For a lot of people, seeing somebody wear one of those immediately sets off all sorts of emotions and assumptions. It’s understandable, but it’s also wrong to assume you know everything you need to know about a person based on it.
We also learned a very important lesson about confrontation in the age of social media, it is best to simply walk away from confrontation before it gets blown out of proportion. And, perhaps for the rest of us, it is best to avoid snap judgements when the facts are not all evident. The court of social media proclaims people guilty until proven innocent, and has much lower evidentiary standards.
