Covington Catholic Students, Black Hebrews, and Nathan Phillips

Here's my take, after spending Monday and Tuesday, January 21 and 22, looking at all the videos I found of the incidents on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, reading some articles, and tweeting, retweeting and responding to tweets about them.

Nobody seems to have noticed that the lengthy video from the Black Hebrews begins with them engaging the Native Americans. They say that God took the NA's land from them and gave it to the white people because the NA's were worshipping idols and false gods. In other words, the BH's initial target was Nathan Phillips' group.

Boys from Covington Catholic High School arrived to wait for the buses to take them back home. At some point they began to heckle the BH's. The BH's then turned to the CCH boys and started accusing them of racism. They also used homophobic rhetoric. When the BH's said Trump is a homosexual and said the U.S. is a hypocrite nation because we give rights to "faggots," the boys booed loudly. The boys eventually started doing school cheers, one of which looked sort of like a haka by the boy who led it.

When the first video went viral, Nathan Phillips and his supporters claimed that the students had surrounded his group and blocked them as they were conducting a ceremony which they intended to complete by ascending to the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When additional video showed that Phillips had actually walked into the midst of the students singing and beating his drum, and that there was plenty of room on the steps for them to get to the top without plowing through the students, Phillips gave the explanation that he and others were concerned that the confrontation between the Covington boys and the Black Hebrews was about to become violent, so he went between them with his chant to defuse the situation.

If defusing the situation was his purpose (or if they just wanted to go up the steps), the boys had no way of knowing that, since no one explained it to them. On several videos students can be heard asking themselves, "What's going on?" On another some are chanting, "What protest is this?" (or something like that).

Video shows Phillips walking up to Nick Sandmann singing and drumming, and getting in his face while continuing to sing and drum. Nick just stood where he was. Video shows room on either side of him, so that Phillips could have gone around him. Thus Sandmann was not blocking Phillips. Technically, it seems that Phillips assaulted Sandmann. At different points, videos show Sandmann smiling, with the expression widely characterized as a smirk, and looking slightly bewildered. One image shows him leaning slightly backwards as Phillips confronts him. At one point someone off camera says, "Be strong."

Video also shows some of the boys jumping and imitating Phillips' song. One boy is seen doing the tomahawk chop. Of course, this is not respectful. On the other hand it is not nearly as disrespectful as it would have been if they had been told Phillips was performing some sort of sacred ceremony. Still, it would be good for the school to do something to teach to boys to be more respectful of other cultures.

One of the NA's is seen arguing with a student that his people have been here two or four generations while his have been here "millions." When the student says that the NA's came from Asia over a land bridge, he says that's nonsense and proposes another theory which is inaudible. The student smilingly shouts, "We should all go back to Africa!" Some people have mistakenly taken the words "go back to Africa" as directed at one of the groups confronting them. Nick Sandmann is seen looking briefly at that student and motioning him to quiet down.

Eventually the boys leave to go to their buses, some chanting, "Let's go home." One of the NA's says, "I got it." Nathan Phillips raises his arms, seemingly in triumph, while dancing and loudly vocalizing.

A few of the boys, including Sandmann, were wearing Make America Great Again hats. I saw maybe five or six in the crowd. Some people have tried to say that wearing MAGA hats proves that the Covington boys are racists. Apart from the fact that there were few of them, and it's wrong to attribute it to the whole group, it's not accurate to say that MAGA hats simply mean racism the way KKK hoods do (which some commentators have asserted. After Trump was elected, there were several articles attempting to explain why people voted for him. Prominent among those reasons were concerns about jobs and the economy. Another reason many people voted for him was his claim to be pro-life. Given that the boys had come from the midwest to a pro-life march, there are clear easons for them to support Trump without any racism involved.

I saw no explicit racism, or attempt to interfere with the NA's on the part of the Covington boys. It seems clear to me that Nathan Phillips singled Nick Sandmann out for confrontation, and I suspect that it was because hew was one of the few wearing a MAGA hat.

The NA's should have regarded the CCH boys and themselves as allies united in opposition to the positions of the BH's. Instead, the fact that a very brief snippet was originally posted with a false characterization of the event (along with the "I got it" and the "victory dance" by Phillips) suggests that the whole thing was a set-up by the NA's.

Edited to add:

See also this excellent article by Andrew Sullivan analyzing the way the matter played out and what it tells us about our current situation.