A new year is all about turning over a new leaf; starting fresh; becoming a better person; resolving your wrongs. A shame that some of the first to publicly break that pact of do-goodness are none other than the generation that is supposed to be all about peace and equality.
A group of teens from Covington Catholic School who were at a March for Life rally on the 18th of January found themselves in the middle of a viral war between the right and left wing over the long weekend. It all started when a video surfaced of them taunting and laughing as a Native-American man chanted songs and played the drum in front of the riotous group, who allegedly had been chanting racial slurs at a Black Hebrew Israelites.
According to Nathan Phillips, the 64-year-old drummer who served as a US Marine, he stepped in front of the Trump gear accessorized teens to “diffuse,” the situation. While Phillips’ intentions were noble, the confrontations quickly took a turn for the worse.
In the video, the teens are seen staring with a smirk on their faces at the man as he circles around them, and some even take it as far as mocking and imitating the song, performing ‘Tomahawk chops,’ around Phillips, screaming ”Build a wall,” and shouting “Go back to Africa!”
Since Friday, though, the situation has grown diluted with another video, this one multiple hours long, which does feature what seems to be the Black Hebrew Israelites rally coming a little too close to deny all innocence of the situation. Though the audio is so bad that it is impossible to decipher if anything was said, many are jumping to the defense of the boys, blaming it on the Israelites, playing the boys will be boys card, among a minimum of other excuses.
Even Donald Trump has stepped out in defense of the boys, via Twitter, of course, what many critics are claiming is yet another half-hearted publicity move to win back the support of America’s conservatives. “Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!”
Among the public’s outrage was a tweet by a girl who responded to a video in which she was in, with the teen boys harassing her. “The Covington Catholic boys harrassed [sic ]my friends and I before the incident with Nathan Phillips even happened. I’m tired of reading things saying they were provoked by anyone else other than their own egos and ignorance,” she wrote on the 21st.
The responses to the situation have come from all sorts of people, positions, and defenses, but one thing is clear to me as a member of Generation Z: Regardless of your position on this matter, we don’t need racism and bigotry tacked onto the long list of not-great descriptions of the future of the world.
Maya Henry, 2024- World News/ Politics Writer
Photo Credit: miamiherald.com
A reverberation of GALA student voices 