Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/20/longer-video-of-native-america.html
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Two wrongs do not make a right.
According to this student, the smiling student was grinning because he was enjoying the music, but eventually became confused, along with everyone else.
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Nathan Philips has already responded to this with his account of what happened, including details about what wasn’t caught on video:
In his telling he witnessed the teens in question harassing the black activists. And chose to intervene, hoping to de-escalate the situation.
From everything I’ve seen this video, and the claim that these young white men were actually the ones being harassed, is based solely on this video. And is being pushed primarily by these young men themselves and their parents. And of course the right wing media.
By Philip’s account the young men in question were the aggressors, and he stepped in an attempt to keep things from getting out of hand. Then attempted to extract himself when he realized how dangerous these young men’s behavior was. Only to be prevented by our smiling poster boy. Given that the students themselves and their parents are giving a frankly bonkers explanation (kid in the photo was smiling because he was enjoying himself! they were attacked by BLACK MUSLIMS), and nearly everyone else who was there has been pretty consistent with Philips.
I’m gonna go with him. Especially given the number of people calling out this new video as not capturing those kid’s behavior.
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While Phillips was admirable to try to defuse the situation by putting himself between the two groups, I don’t think that lets the kids off the hook. They were still jeering him, we all saw that.
Another group acting uncivil doesn’t mean everyone should be equally uncivil.
(edit: Or as my mother would say “just because THEY started it doesn’t mean you get to finish it!”)
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1:06:45 threatening an innocent bystander with violence
1:07:40 calls the kids “incest babies”
1:15:20 calls the kids “future school shooters”
1:18:20 “crackers” and “ni**ers”
1:24:53 is booed when he lets loose with homophobic slurs
1:27:00 “there will be no peace until there is bloodshed”
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Still a bunch of punk ass kids wearing the latest in KKK hat wear.
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Image: Buzz and Woody, “Ducks. Ducks everywhere.”
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The problem is that the kids doubled down when Philips got between them.
The “tomohawk chop” was directed at Phillips who did nothing but stand there, drumming.
At that point, they were no longer in conflict with the third group, they were engaged in racist behaviour towards Philips.
I knew the whitewashing would happen. God forbid affluent white boys be held accountable for anything they do.
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As I predicted, they are trying to play it off like they weren’t jeering him, rather it was some kind of musical group hug.
From the Slate link above:
" We initially thought this was a cultural display since he was beating along to our cheers and so we clapped to the beat.” The student also improbably claims that the white student who stood in front of Phillips with a smug look on his face was simply standing “where he was, smiling and enjoying the experience.”
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And of course they just happened to be down there in their MAGA hats. Observing and just enjoying the liberal protest. In their MAGA hats. Just waiting for a bus having fun!
In MAGA hats.
The accounts they’re pushing are very calculated to divorce these young men from the far right
protesters in attendance.
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Apparently these “good Catholic boys” missed the lesson about “blessed are the peacemakers”, or perhaps misheard as in Life of Brian.
The Black Israelites are known aggro bonehead bigots, to the point that they’re a running joke in NYC, but so are smirking young white men who wear MAGA hats (especially when they attend a school rife with bullying and racism and are taught by a hatemongering priest).
As to more reasonable priests…
First, a comment about the March for Life, which I support. The gross over-politicization of this religious event, and its increasing reliance on political figures to draw crowds, is unnecessary, irreligious and dangerous.
Yes, tsk-tsk. Maybe if Father Martin didn’t want it “over-politicised” he should have been urging them not to have the march in Washington, DC for the past 45 years, yeah? His other sentiments are fine, but that statement is an expression of wide-eyed naivete that a Jesuit only deploys when he knows he doesn’t have a rhetorical leg to stand on.
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Well I think the cheesemakers are pretty awesome.
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That these kids acted like this is not shocking. That someone taught them to behave this way is.
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Here’s a very long video that shows the interaction between the CCS kids (who aren’t wise enough to not wear MAGA hats) and the Black Hebrew Israelites (who seem more than a bit homophobic). https://youtu.be/UQyBHTTqb38
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After watching a much longer video that shows the lead-up and aftermath of the incident, it doesn’t look like the high school students were harassing the Native Americans as was reported yesterday.
@frauenfelder, If this is your official stance, then you can put me on the list of people disappointed in BoingBoing.
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From the Reason article (emphasis added):
Phillips’ account, meanwhile, is at best flawed, and arguably deliberately misleading.
Bullshit. It’s apparent from the longer video that Phillips came upon two opposing groups, a large crowd of young white men wearing MAGA hats and a smaller group of black men and, having heard none of the hate speech in the video, quite logically concluded the former were the hostile instigators. Even if his knowledge of the preceding events was incomplete, what he did was admirable attempt to stand between, as he well put it, a rock and a hard place.
As for the students’ behavior, they demonstrated a lack of respect for an elder, a Native American, a veteran and, perhaps most importantly, a peacemaker attempting to diffuse a volatile situation by, as far as he knew, putting himself in grave bodily danger. They also appear to show solidarity with the couple of black students in their crowd when the other side turned its hate speech on them. That’s about the only good thing they seem to do. They booed the homophobic slurs directed at them, but given the source, it’s far from certain they weren’t booing being called faggots rather than the use of the slur.
IMO, the only person entirely blameless in this situation is Phillips, and knowing there was another group has not changed that.
And the question remains, where the hell were these students’ chaperones that they let this go one for nearly two hours and did nothing to intervene?!
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They’re well known assholes as @gracchus points out . But two wrongs don’t make a right, and it doesn’t excuse another group engaging, escalating, and then going after 3rd party.
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I never thought I’d see the day.
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Whole lotta smart people letting me down these days…
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This is why Phillips’ read of the situation was rational, albeit incomplete. Don’t adorn yourself in the symbols of racist ideology if you don’t want bystanders to believe you’re the racists. If someone walks around with a Nazi swastika, others will make assumptions about them. And if you’re doing to be little edgelords, grow the fuck up.
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