“To wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.” – George Orwell, 1984
When prominent public figures and news organizations make claims like those leveled at the Covington Catholic boys in the last few days- they sure as hell had better be right. They can’t be partially right. They can’t be right about a greater moral issue or a larger problem in society or something those boys represented to some people watching the footage. They need to be 100% correct that these boys are the racist monsters they are alleging, and they need to back that up with solid evidence. The problem- as anyone who has been following the updates to this story can now see- is that they were not right, and the backpedaling by news outlets and both liberal and conservative talking heads and public figures is happening at dizzying speed as the school is shut down for death threats and yet more video emerges that ANOTHER group was taunting the boys before the stare down with Nathan Phillips ever occurred.
The extended video of the events shows that the boys were not totally blameless during the moments that Nathan Phillips stood beating his drum (a smile many perceived as cocky, some tomahawk hand gestures, an ignorant rape comment made by a boy from another school, a back and forth about national origins), but what it also shows is something not a single outlet originally reported- that the boys were being called “incest babies,” “child molesting fa**ots,” “dirty ass crackers,” and “pale faces” for over an hour before Nathan Phillips walked up to them. Not a single racial slur can be heard from the boys directed back at the adult men (the Black Israelites- a known hate group) who were harassing them during the hour or so of footage. Nevertheless, Phillips described his choice to walk up to Nick Sandmann like this, “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that…they were going to hurt them. They were going to hurt them because of the color of their skin.” This description is absolutely bewildering when one watches the footage. It’s even more mystifying when it becomes clear that the Black Israelites had been racially taunting the Native Americans, as well, prior to the drum incident.
Cast in the worst light, Phillips is an activist who purposefully gave deceptive testimony about the event (given that his account does not match the footage, he has protested Trump before, he unsuccessfully tried to force his way into a Catholic service with the same drum just a day after this incident, he made similar claims in the past, and he misrepresented his military service). Cast in the best light, the boys’ school chants, gestures, escalating volume, and the sheer size of their group led him to believe they were going to retaliate against the hate group, so he intervened. The second scenario does not really match Phillips’ description of his thought process, leading one to believe that his own bias made him project onto the boys because of the event they were attending and the gear they were wearing. One wonders what a different story we would be reading about now if Phillips had confronted the Black Israelite group with his chant instead of Covington Catholic- if he had tried to diffuse their hatred after hearing their abuses toward the boys and his own group. What a beautiful sight it would have been to see a Native American elder defending white, MAGA hat wearing, Republican boys in an incredible reach across religious, political, and ethnic lines. That’s not our reality, however. It became quickly apparent that Phillips’ story was not the WHOLE story and maybe not even half of it….but if you have been following the updates you know all of this by now.
My point is greater than simply saying that there was a rush to judgment. I’m arguing that this rush to judgment and its sheer magnitude so outweighed the crime (while completely missing the racially motivated activating event) that the boys have become a symbol to many of a political machine that is all too quick to throw people into “the basket of deplorables” and cry “racist” without evidence. The students SHOULD have been moved by chaperones to another location when the hate speech of the Black Israelites began instead of encouraged to drown it out. They could have handled the approach of Phillips and his followers more respectfully (in some cases), but the absolute visceral hatred directed at them makes them SEEM like saints. If the calls to violence had not been so extreme…if the narrative had not so quickly deteriorated…if the media had done a halfway competent job of vetting this story before running the damning headlines…if even a fraction of the talking heads had condemned the known hate group for their harassment rather than ONLY the high school boys (or if they condemned the hate group NOW for that matter)…if there had been fewer “we were wrong, but they deserved it for representing white oppression, wearing a MAGA hat, or attending a pro-life march” pseudo-apologies…if the threats were not STILL coming in to beat them or burn them or shoot them…perhaps the boys would not be quickly becoming cultural heroes to many on the right.
These boys are not heroes. They are not villains. They are a powerful example of our society’s need to virtue signal and to give a “relevant” take before we have the facts. For every person on the left condemning them, one on the right threw their hat into the ring to prove their own virtue. Their treatment reveals a deep distrust of white male culture in our society that many wanted these boys to atone for and a glaring flaw in our media’s vetting tactics and perhaps even their honesty.
At this point, most people of note seem to have backed down and issued retractions or addendums (except for some far left personalities and Alyssa Milano, but that is redundant). Some have even issued apologies for “speaking too early” or “getting it wrong.” Very few have actually apologized to the boys whose school is still shut down, whose families are still being hounded, and whose futures are still in question. The sad reality is that most people on social media don’t read retractions and addendums. Some are happy about the outcome, even if they have read them.
So, why did people have to retract and apologize and amend when there actually were a few things they could latch onto that the boys had said or done? The answer is because they were SO wrong, SO angry, SO violent in their rhetoric, and SO one-sided in their condemnation. The video didn’t show that the boys were angels but rather that they were not the devils that they had been portrayed. In fact, it showed people doing the very things the students had been accused of to THEM, which nobody had bothered to mention, and which was extremely embarrassing to news outlets when revealed. But then, isn’t that always the risk of public shaming? If you get it wrong- even a little- you become a fool and your target becomes a martyr. If you get it REALLY wrong, you give your target a power they would never have had without the strength of your false accusations behind them.
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About the Author
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Jackie Chea is a blogger from San Antonio, Texas who holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Community Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She writes on political and cultural issues from a conservative, religious standpoint. She lives in the Lone Star State with her husband Nick, her 5-year-old son Lincoln, and her rescue dogs. |
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