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When unarmed teen Mike Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson, he was called "no angel." Tamir Rice was 12 years old when police shot and killed him as he played in a park; it took police only two seconds to make a judgment and pull the trigger because they thought he was carrying a gun. These two young people were essentially indicted and sentenced to death without any court involvement, not because they had committed a crime, but because police made snap decisions about who they were. Countless other boys and men of color have died this way, and rather than getting a fair trial, they are often posthumously vilified in the court of public opinion.
But when a white teenager does something bad, he seems more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.
We're seeing this racist double standard play out in real time, thanks to Nicholas Sandmann, who has been given the chance to explain viral images and videos of him and his classmates laughing and chanting face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, who stood beating a drum in prayer. The combination of Nicholas’s physical stance, his smirk, and the group wearing MAGA attire sent the story into a viral tailspin, and a he-said-he-said debate ensued. No matter which video you watch — the longer one, or the shorter viral clip — the teens appear to be disrespectful, at the very least, taunting and harassing at worst.
But many have been quick to jump to the defense of Nicholas and his classmates. In a statement released after the incident, and now through his appearance on the Today show, Nicholas has been given opportunities that many white men benefit from: He can rewrite history from his point of view.
According to Phillips's account of the situation, a group of Native people involved in the Indigenous Peoples March approached as teens from Covington Catholic, who were attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., were being yelled at by another group, identified as part of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. (A wing of this movement has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an "extremist fringe" group that's "growing more militant.") They were yelling obscenities at the teens, which Nicholas described in his statement after the incident.
"They called us 'racists,' 'bigots,' 'white crackers,'" Nicholas wrote in his statement. That much is true. Videos show it happening.
The Covington Catholic students rallied together as the insults were hurled at them, chanting and yelling together, as Phillips and a group of Native marchers approached in what Phillips said was an attempt at peace.
"When I started singing our songs, our prayers to God — that drum is an instrument we use to communicate to God. When I started that drum beat it was, 'God look at us here now,'" Phillips told MSNBC. "I'm praying, 'God, we're at the end of our Indigenous People's March and we want to end this in a good way, but look at my America here.' We're at a point where we can't stand by and watch this. You've gotta do something, you've gotta stop it."
In a different interview on CNN, Phillips said he quickly realized he was in a potentially risky situation.
"Here's a group of people angry at somebody else and I put myself in front of that," he told CNN. "All of a sudden, I'm the one who's [the target of] all that anger."
That's where, in the video, Nicholas can be seen staring Phillips down. Some have claimed that Phillips singled Nicholas out, but according to Phillips's account, Nicholas wouldn't move as many of the other students had.
Nicholas, on the other hand, said he was singled out. In his statement, he maintained that his smirk was an attempt to reduce tension, claiming he "believed that by remaining motionless and calm [he] was helping to diffuse the situation." He wrote that he never felt he was blocking Phillips's path. Some things in Nicholas's statement ring true: He and his friends were taunted by other protesters, and Nicholas seemed to try to stop a classmate from engaging with another Native person. But it's hard to stomach his smirk and the deadpan, stony facial expression, just inches from a man of color who said he was engaging in a cultural form of prayer as an attempt at peace.
So who do we believe?
On social media, many have pointed out the hypocrisy in how people have rushed to defend and protect Nicholas as outrage mounts over the clash. Many have recalled the judgment from white people that boys like Mike Brown and Tamir Rice received in death, and put it in stark contrast to how white people are now protecting their own, something we've seen over and over again. Brock Turner comes to mind. So does "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch. So do white police officers who kill unarmed black men and are rarely brought to justice.
The genocide and violence inflicted upon Native people across centuries also comes to mind, offenses which endure in the form of normalized racism, erasure, corruption of land and water sources, forced reliance on a government that breaks or ignores treaty promises (and has made recent efforts to do more damage to tribal sovereignty), gun-related violence and police brutality (with Native communities experiencing the highest rate of fatal police encounters), high suicide rates, domestic violence, and an epidemic of murdered and missing Native women and girls that spans a continent, and more.
This is not to say that Nicholas directly perpetrated violence, or that he's equal to criminals like Turner — he's certainly not. But he does seem to be benefitting from the systems of power that protect white men, no matter what they do or don't do. That's what this is really about. It's not about Nicholas, or even about Covington Catholic; it's not about the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. It's bigger than that. It's about who we believe, who we protect, and who we decide is or is not worthy of those things.
By chiming in on Twitter, President Donald Trump made it clear who he believes. As president, he has rewritten history many times and made a habit of ridiculing and mocking marginalized people — Native people included — the same way the Covington Catholic boys seemed to. Cruelty is part of Trump’s repertoire, so it’s no surprise that the version of history pushed by Nicholas and his supporters is the one being endorsed by a commander in chief who obscures truth and discredits facts. Powerful white people help other white people, often at the expense of people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ people, and other disenfranchised groups. That’s how it’s worked for centuries, and Trump’s support for Nicholas is another signal that, under his rule, that’s how it will continue to work.
Related:_ Yes, the MAGA Hat-Wearing Students Are Teenagers. That Doesn’t Exempt Them From Responsibility
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