When to blame the young person, the school, the diocese?
NOprophet_NØprofit
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This has been all over my newsfeed. The diocese appears to have responded more properly. Probably many are aware of this incident, where students from an exclusive Roman Catholic-affiliated Kentucky USA high school attended an anti-abortion rally in Washington DC and then blocked a group of indigenous people who were participating in an Indigenous Peoples March. Wearing trumpish hats and apparently chanting racism. The thing that concerns me is that if students are willing and motivated to behave this way, who is raising them and who is educating them? Ignorant racists? How widespread it this sort of attitude and ignorance in middle America?
The questions I have include what response is in order. My first thought is that the school and teachers/supervising adults needs to censured because obviously the supervision and education of students is lacking. My second is that the students actively participating should be suspended and have cultural sensitivity training.
In some of our countries, the behaviour of the students would be subject to human rights complaints and I wonder if investigation as hate crimes would occur.
The questions I have include what response is in order. My first thought is that the school and teachers/supervising adults needs to censured because obviously the supervision and education of students is lacking. My second is that the students actively participating should be suspended and have cultural sensitivity training.
In some of our countries, the behaviour of the students would be subject to human rights complaints and I wonder if investigation as hate crimes would occur.
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Those young people lack respect, they lack decency, they lack empathy and their education is also sadly lacking.
Who to blame? Parents, school, society - in that order.
In fairness, though, there are probably lots of public-school kids who would behave the same way. And while yes, such behaviour does dovetail with the historical teachings and actions of the RCC, it also meshes with the historical teachings and actions of lots of other denominations as well. And, indeed, secular governments.
They should be old enough to know better, however, if their school or church or parents have taught them through words or actions that others who are different from them are somehow beneath them and worthy of scorn, it would take a huge effort and self awareness to think for themselves and determine that all others, including the unborn children they're supposed to be marching for, should be afforded the same dignities and honor they feel they themselves are entitled to.
I can't believe these boys seriously believe in the (required?) march they attended. I would tend to think it was an opportunity to pal around with their friends and see what kind of sanctioned mischief they could get into.
It's pretty pervasive, in my experience, however I do see some light! I know of many young men who seriously denounce such things as what you presented in your OP. I know of many young women who will stop any person who denigrates another just for the reason of being different from them. I'm just glad it's not as bad as when and where I was growing up. But if the PtB continue to give permission and encouragement to this type of abhorrent behavior, we will be back in the bad old days.
It's not clear how old these students are, but ISTM that, thanks to the Internet, a 16-year-old is quite capable of deciding that what he's taught in school about racism is PC Bullshit without any input from his parents either.
@Arethosemyfeet I agree with you that compared with the home, schools have very little impact. It's far too much a fond belief of people in government, opinion-formers, the high-minded etc that somehow if we dump on schools responsibility for correcting all the failures and shortcomings of parents, children, society etc. then everything will be well and besides, we can blame teachers when they aren't.
PtB...particularly the racist in the White House.
It’s kind of messed up that wearing the current president*’s campaign gear, or chanting one of his slogans, or even chanting his name is understood by just about everyone to be a racist taunt, but apparently that’s where we are now.
Vietnam vet, BTW.
If only we were all connected to some kind of web of information with a worldwide scope. Then you could provide a “link” to that video instead of expecting us to just take your word for it.
But I would think a lot of kids view whatever they read on the internet in contexts that color their judgement. I adopted most of my parents' views without much questioning, and when those views were challenged when I was in college, my initial response was to defend them.
In the case of these kids I imagine their parents and the school have similar values, as the whole point of sending your kid to an exclusive virtually all-white religious school is to inculcate your values.
Interesting. I was yelling "Bullshit!!" at my parents during living-room debates by late high school(and no, that did not go over very well). I'd like to say that this was because I was some sort of free-thinking rebel, but in all honesty, I was likely just repeating views of other sources, much the way I had repeated my parents' views a few years earlier.
Another factor is that my father was a semi-political Conservative supporter, and my mother was a largely apolitical cradle-Liberal, and while they did not really discuss politics in any in-depth way, I grew up with the clear understanding that there were a number of issues on which they'd be in strong disagreement. So the whole idea of repeating my parents' views was kind of complicated by that.
(EXPLAINER: My father was an anglo-Canadian Tory and my mother a French Canadian Liberal, and in the 1970s those two political parties tended to be on the opposite side of French/English issues, especially in my home province.)
My first thought is that the school and teachers/supervising adults needs to censured because obviously the supervision and education of students is lacking.
If they were part of a school trip, and identifiable as such, the teachers should have been supervising. The boys have brought the school into disrepute.
In my experience, every school group which goes outwith the school is told that they are representing the school and any bad behaviour will not be tolerated.
It has occurred to me that as it was a school group, any boy not comfortable with what was happening couldn't just walk away and leave the group.
Supervision and education are separate matters. Obviously poor education is at the root of this, and is a bigger issue than poor supervision.
Take for instance the Laquan McDonald murder and all the lies politics and deceit around it. If you are in the UK you may have seen a couple of inches of newsprint about it, but basically a racist policeman did not wait for a taser to arrive to assist in the apprehending of a young black guy with a 3 inch knife under the influence of PCP and shot him 16 times, mostly in the back while he was on the ground, the dashcam footage was not released until a year later when stories of what happened seemed not to fit with the coroners report and eyewitnesses.
It is unfortunate that a lot of people cannot see that they are (white usually) priviledged and do not see what is keeping a lot of people downtrodden and at the margins of society. They buy into the RW rhetoric that is pumped out by the likes of trump and youtube.... gonna stop as my head is buzzing and I need to rant
I won't hold my breath for "racist and homophobic blacks and native Americans" to be added to the OP.
I am not condoning the fact that the students were taunted and ridiculed, nor am I excusing the behavior of those who did the taunting and ridiculing, but it is not surprising that such behavior occurred.
But surely the students could have reacted differently than by turning on and mocking an innocent bystander.
While I don't condone the students being taunted, wearing a MAGA hat when so many perceive it as representing white supremacy, is asking for attention.
Why talk as if these were preschoolers who clearly made no choices of their own?
We seem now to be clinging to competing identity subsets. Who is a "real" American (or even a "real" human)? Can that identity belong to more than one tribe? Must becoming a "real" American (or human) require constant struggle, self-justification, competition, conflict and subjugation of The Other? Can we only define Who We Are through invidious and insulting comparisons with Who We Are Not?
You will see the Black Hebrew Group taunting a Native American Group who were there to honor Native American Veterans who had died serving their country. At about 30 minutes into the video, there is a brief shot of a small group of white young men with MAGA hats who stopped to watch the exchanges between the Blacks and the Native Americans. At about one hour into the video, you see the Blacks taunting the white kids, who responded in kind. There is a chaperone who inserts himself between the Blacks and the Whites to try to move the white kids back. He gets some of them to sit down only briefly. There are about 100 white males at this point. Things are getting tense.
At 1:40.00 Two Native American drummers and a few other Native Americans insert themselves between the whites and the blacks. Mr. Phillip, the lead Native American drummer later said he did it because he could tell things were about to get out of hand.
It is only toward the end of the video you find a policeman coming around to get the Black Hebrews to move on.
Please note: you have three groups. The Native Americans. The Black Hebrews, and the White kids. The Black Hebrews are known to take advantage of gatherings on the Lincoln Mall to try to stir things up. Each of those groups has the right of peaceful assembly but when the taunts started getting personal, it was no longer peaceful.
Also of note: There is practically no police presence until the end of the incident. That is because the Mall Police, which are under the employ of the National Park Service, are furloughed due to the partial shutdown. The policeman that did show up was a member of the metro police--an entirely different
To me, things would have been much worse if the Native Americans had not inserted themselves between the blacks and the whites.
Conclusion: Fund the National Park Service. Get the police out there for proper crowd control.
Covington High School will need to take remedial action, but I do not think the kids should be expelled--no blows were traded. Better trained chaperones and more of them would have helped. There should be some discussions on campus about the human dignity of all.
As I have said the Black Hebrews are known to try to provoke incidents on the National Mall. Most people ignore them. Once in a while, they do get under some groups' skin.
My hat is off to the Native Americans who were doing everything they could to keep the peace.
The confrontation between the drummers and the boys is at about 1 hour 14 mins.
I think this gives a slightly different complexion on the events.
There are some shouty people standing around for most of the video. When they realise the boys are Roman Catholics, they start saying some pretty horrible things.
In fairness to the boys (and others - at the end of the video a group of girls stand with their backs to the shouty men, which I thought was an interesting response) they stood and took it for quite a long time.
My perception of the section where the drummers intervened was that the boys had had just about enough of hearing that shit (certainly not helped by the MAGA hats - but the abuse was certainly directed at them for being Catholic) and had no particular way to reasonably release their emotions.
The drummers came into the scene and the boys - not entirely unreasonably, given that the shouty men were loudly claiming ownership of them - considered that the drummers were of the same group as the shouty men.
And they acted like pretty much any group of riled up young men who have been taught not to fight in those circumstance, and instead turned to ridicule.
Which I'm sure they regret in retrospect, but certainly was not an altogether unreasonable response, albeit at the wrong target.
Finally, I'd just say that I went to a strict religious school. This would not have happened - the problem was that the group of boys were apparently expected to hang around within earshot of a group who was spouting incredibly offensive stuff. Any sensible adult with them should have rapidly moved them on - it wasn't a police situation for a long period before the events I reference above.
It also might have helped if they'd turned round and asked the shouty men to STFU.
This is like making bullied kids talk to their bullies because of restorative reconciliation bullshit.
They could have gone and stood by the chaperones, wherever the fuck they were.
They should have walked away as a group. I've no idea why they didn't. They stood there for a good time open-mouthed as all kinds of offensive bullshit rained down on them.
I'd guess that at the core of the group is probably a group of football or hockey players with some prestige given to not backing down.
But as I said at my school - which was into playing sport aggressively and boys supporting their fellows against all foes - I just can't imagine this happening.
Because it was a big deal to bring shame upon the school, and it was firmly instilled in the boys that sometimes the right thing to do was walk away.
I know, all schools are different. But I'm doubting any RC school seriously wanted to have their boys for an extended time in a place where they were being provoked and verbally abused.
And, again, the MAGA hats certainly didn't help at all. Whoever allowed that is a dick.
I thought he did exactly as I'd expect someone here to do in a parallel circumstance. I also saw he could probably have tried to push past, but that is an aggressive act also.
The trumpish hats are not encouraging about having any form a dialogue. They are an aggressive and racist symbol aren't they? It says something about schools if they allow offensive advertising material into schools. Overt politicking perhaps is allowed in schools?
Fair enough.
I guess it says that the drumming wasn't perceived by the boys as peaceful though.
I think the women were part of the Native American group, considering their dress. I also think it was a diversion tactic on the part of the Native Americans to divert the abuse the Black Hebrews were heaping on the White Males.
I do note just before the Native American Drummers inserted themselves between the whites and the blacks, it appears the Whites, who were on the steps of the memorial were beginning to come down from the steps and advancing towards the blacks.
When the Drummers inserted themselves it seemed that it broke the spell on the whites. Some of the kids in the background began to dance to the drummers. Yes, it was a mocking dance, but they were diverted from advancing to the Blacks.
I do not presume to speak for Mr. Phillips, the main drummer, but I believe he would be willing to speak to the white group.
As I said the Black Hebrews were getting what they wanted. They stir up trouble. You can go to the Black Hebrew Israelite Confrontation playlist on YouTube to see some of the other videos showing them confronting other groups. When they do go out they always video their confrontations. As I said, people who know of them, just ignore them. The kids from Kentucky had likely never heard of them.
The young men were in Washington to attend a March For Life gathering. I think I have seen pictures of them at the March for Life Rally without the MAGA hats. The Trump campaign supports the MFL. No doubt a campaign person was handing out those hats--they all seem rather new when they are filmed in the Black Hebrew video (above).
Again. There was no police presence on the Mall when this happened. I actually think if it were not for the Native Americans inserting themselves and causing the diversion there would have been a full-blown race riot. The Blacks really wanted the Whites to pounce on them. Just think what that would have been like on national TV, The Native Americans succeeded in stopping that when the school chaperones could not.
Well if that's true then the drumming miraculously did what it is intended to do.
See, they were provoked into being racist assholes, as all young white men apparently are when sufficiently provoked. It's always someone else's fault. This is the polar opposite of how the actions of non-white people are usually judged in public, where there's always something they should have done differently to prevent whatever problematic thing occurred.
For a bit of context, here's a tweeted account of someone who had run-ins as an out gay student with the Brett Kavanaugh starter kits who attend Covington Catholic School. Almost certainly none of the same students at this event, but it gives you an idea of the culture they're coming out of.
Excuse me, I'm not making excuses for anyone. I'm simply saying that this is not altogether unexpected behaviour.
I've stood near actual Nazis. I know what racism sounds like.
The drummer certainly didn't deserve the abuse. But then neither did the boys.
It's clearly not good how they treated that drummer, but given the context, it could have been a whole lot worse.
Wow! "Not as bad as Nazis" seems to be the ultimate damning with faint praise, but you seem to consider passing this exceedingly low bar as being notably commendable. Talk about "the soft bigotry of low expectations".
So why exactly are you saying nothing about the shouty men?
Have you actually watched the video?
The video you linked to doesn't show anyone swarming anyone else. There's an old guy beating a drum and chanting in front of a teenager, who grins a bit embarrassedly, but otherwise barely reacts, with a crowd of other teenagers a few feet away, being slightly rowdy, with some of them making a half-hearted attempt to clap along with the drumming. It doesn't show any threats, insults, or harassment. I'm not saying there wasn't any - I wasn't there - but there doesn't seem to be anything much worth complaining about on the clip. A bit of piss-taking, perhaps. I wouldn't exactly have been proud of my son laughing at an adult in public in the way that (some, not all, of) the kids in the video seem to be, and would hope that he would show a bit more respect, but I'm sufficiently realistic to know that taking the piss is something that teenagers do. They are settling into an identity as adults, and often painfully conscious of their status, and taking the piss is a coping strategy at least as often as it is nasty or aggressive.
Swarming means surrounding, and in this case, blocking a person from moving. Assaulting means threatening violence or actually physically harming. You may interpret and excuse whatever you want, which is some of what I'm getting from defences of the behaviour.
Comparison: if there was a Christian religious procession which was blocked in public space, what then? But then we have the issue of cultural literacy.
When I was in high school, I went to my first college (American) football game. The rivalries between the two schools were very tense. Towards the end of the game, the kids on the one side of the game did not like a particular call and started booing. The kids on the other side of the game responded with jeers. Bottles started to be thrown. The police department started to assemble in riot gear on the one side of the field. But the band leaders from both colleges assembled both bands together on the other side of the field and began playing the "Star Spangled Banner." All of the sudden both sides stopped and literally faced the musicians. The potential for riot had been stopped.
As I was posting my above post, a reporter on NPR was interviewing a Native American. The NA said it was his experience growing up there would be times during downtimes at powwows where different Native tribes come together when the teens from one tribe would start taunting the kids from another tribe. When this happened the sacred drummers would come together to start playing, and the incident would diffuse itself. The kids on both sides would stop and face the music.
(Ever hear the phrase: "Stop and face the Music"?)
So, in my mind, the drummer did diffuse the incident.
Which "shouty men" are you talking about? The Black Hebrew Israelites or the guys with the Indigenous People's March? The reason I'm not saying anything about either of them is because this thread isn't primarily about them and no one is trying to portray them as moral exemplars by virtue of their heroic non-Nazihood. Plus that kind of "whataboutism" is often meant as a distraction.
It doesn't have to be either/or.
Taking the piss means to subject someone to ridicule.
The drummer walked into the middle of a confrontation and instead of it escalating into a fight, the focus shifted into him. And the boys began ridiculing (taking the piss out of) him.
I can see how the drummer might have been offended. But I can also see that by inviting the ridicule, he can be said to have defused an escalating situation.
And he did invite it - he literally walked between the two groups.
Well that's as good an explanation as I have.
As you point out, it worked.