Today in the Future of the USA

[minoanmiss]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/19/us/teens-mock-native-elder-trnd/index.html

This weekend in Washington DC, MAGA-gear-wearing White teenage boys from a Kentucky Catholic School first got into a verbal altercation with some Black kids, then, when a Native American elder approached drumming and singing, they surrounded and taunted him.

That smirking boy? I have seen that exact smirk from White boys who told me how women owe men sex (and also from White girls who told me how Black people commit all the crimes in the US). I have seen that smirk so many times from people who just laid out their supposedly logical proof of why I'm not fully human.

I fully expect to find bunches of articles about how this is a brave and admirable exercise of free speech on the White boys' part. I've already seen two different commenters accuse the Native American elder of being "confrontational" and "threatening". Yes, one elderly man armed with a drum is so threatening to a bunch of strapping teenage boys.

In my experience of discussions of free speech it's people like these boys whose rights are championed, and definitely not people such as this elder. And yet the free speech champions have a point -- there are practical and ethical reasons why the US is very cautious about banning speech even aside of supporting the status quo. I don't think laws could have prevented this incident, that what happened was within the purview of laws.

I think it's within the purview of decency. I know that it's a time honored practice to say "people are worse than they used to be", "back in my day," etc, so I'm trying not to say the former and hell, I can say a lot more than I used to be able to. But I do think this incident demonstrates the hatefulness and bigotry the US is currently awash in and that it's not evenly distributed across "both sides". The acceptability of bigotry reactively began rising after President Obama was elected and has mushroomed since President Trump's election.

Also, Covington Catholic High School supposedly is considering expelling the boys, but1) the school was reportedly using the incident for fundraising their website before replacing that with a disavowal and 2) they'd just be heroes wherever else they went in their home communities. They're heroes right now to millions of people who voted for Trump, who chanted along with them "build the wall!" (The whole concept of chanting "build the wall!" at a Native American, the subtext of "The USA is for White people and we're going to drive you out," that deserves an essay of analysis on its own.)

People like to think that racism is the provence of the old and his dying off, but that has never been my experience. And here we can see it strong and thriving in these healthy and belligerent young White men and the community which taught and produced them. I think they're the future of the country I live in, and that scares me.

Comments

[bikergeek]

"What the young man was doing was blocking my escape. I wanted to leave. I was thinking, 'How do I get myself out of this? I want to get away from it,'" Phillips said.

That's not speech, free or otherwise. Preventing someone from leaving a place when you have no lawful right to detain them is violence.

[minoanmiss]

But/and that's why people are trying to cast Elder Phillips as the Scary Nonwhite Aggressor. That and also many 'free speech' proponents like to disregard the physical intimidation of being surrounded by a bunch of hostile people and will argue that there's no such thing and it's certainly not violence.

Or in other words I totally agree with you but I think a significant number of my fellow citizens don't agree with us, and that dismays me, not because I want to be Right but because this disagreement has massive real world consequences.

[cmcmck]

I saw this on the BBC news.

Those young white fools now have their faces plastered across the world's media and I wish them joy of the reaction.

That stare-y one I have to admit I found really disturbing! You see faces like that in images of Kz guards. :o(

Not everyone thinks quite like a certain sort of horribly overprivileged person in the US seems to think, thankfully.

I'm not even going to get into the school they were from and what they were purportedly 'protesting'.......

Hugs

[minoanmiss]

hugs you back

Yeah. I've seen that smirk in real life, and I've seen it in pictures. In real life it always followed some horrible bigoted statement and in pictures it appears on cops blasting civil rights protestors with cannon hoses and, as you pointed out, Kz guards.

shudders

At least a great many people find this horrifying, too.

[sabotabby]

Given that the Catholic Church used to routinely kidnap indigenous children in the US too, I'm not sure that an argument can be made for people being fundamentally less decent now than they used to be. But I do think there was a brief period, coinciding with the era of relative tolerance and prosperity when I was growing up, where it was at least considered a little gauche for whites to be as openly racist and fascist as they are now.

[julian]

This is why I will keep going, basically, "Wow, that was scary and not good" in response to things like this. So that we *don't* lose this.

Well. Or maybe so that it's harder to let these things continue to be the new normal? Something like that.

[ckd]

IIUC, the reason those students were in DC in the first place was because of a school (approved and/or sponsored) trip to march against reproductive rights; the only reason the school cares is because now they look bad.

[minoanmiss]

Oh, absolutely. (And it took them a while to realize this looks bad)

[julian]

I think they're *a* future, but not the only possible future, and I think that's fairly important.

[minoanmiss]

I needed to be reminded of this. :) Thank you.

[lindahoyland]

What disgusting behaviour! Free speech should not include the "right" to harass and abuse people.

[minoanmiss]

It shouldn't, and yet. :(

[cellio]

Those kids' behavior is disgusting.

If the school only takes action against them, though, then they are complicit. Those kids learned those disgusting attitudes -- from their parents, from their all-white Christian school, from their preachers... there is a systemic problem, and both the outbreak and the infectious cause need to be treated. Somehow.

[minoanmiss]

Somehow. *wry smile*

[cjsmith]

I am sad and scared. I don’t know how much hope there is, to be frank. :(

[minoanmiss]

Neither do I. But we can't give up, or so I keep telling myself.

[cjsmith]

I have to keep reminding myself that there is some reason - even if I can’t remember the reason at the moment - that giving up would be less than ideal. :(

[minoanmiss]

I look ag my little roommates and then I know I can't. :/

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

Yes, for a number of reasons, this is NOT the time to give up.

Ann O.

[minoanmiss]

Now, what to do. What can I do.

[vettecat]

So sad and scary. The only comfort is how many people are upset and angry about this.