The denouncement of the MAGA hat boys at D.C. needs to stop (from the article "Teen accused of taunting Native American protesters in viral video says he's receiving death threats.") By Dillon Quicksall

     Recently, a video has gone viral depicting a Teenage boy wearing a MAGA hat and a Native American veteran playing a drum and chanting in what appears to be some sort of standoff with a group of the MAGA hat-wearing boys surrounding them has emerged. Almost immediately, the actions of the boys were denounced by many, and their school even mentioned the possibility of expulsion, as a result of the boys apparently mocking, taunting, and intimidating the man. However, after the initial video went viral, several others emerged alongside a public statement by the boy, Nick Sandmann, that changed entirely the view of the scenario.
     Prior to the standoff, the group of boys, who were merely there to be picked up by a bus home from the March for Life rally, were confronted by a group of men who have been described as "Black Hebrew Israelites." These men began berating the boys with homophobic slurs and racist insults for over an hour, calling them "incest babies, future school shooters, crackers, and  faggots." The boys, for the most part, remained reletively calm, until they started chanting their school chant loudly and a kid ripped his shirt off. The Native American man who was involved in the confrontation decided, quite valiantly, to step in between the two groups, beating a drum a chanting a prayer for peace, hoping to deescalate the scenario. Video evidence was shaky at this point, as the camera kept moving and it was hard to entirely tell what was happening, but the man appeared to wade into the crowd of boys. They then formed a semicircle around him. In the messy formation of this semicircle, he came face-to-face with Nick Sandmann. The two stood in front of each other for several minutes, neither moving, as the group of boys chanted around them.
     Personally, I feel that the "MAGA boys" have received far too much hatred for this. Upon examination of the scenario as a whole, I feel that they did very little wrong. The Veteran Native American walked into the midst of a rowdy group of boys, who were already chanting prior to him walking into their crowd. The boy who stood in front of him was quite stoic, not making any gestures, save for a short-lived smirk, or moving toward him in an intimidating manner. The boy, in a later PR release, said that "[he] believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation." And while the validity of this statement is questionable, Sandmann is depicted calming down a student in a video who starts shouting something about a land bridge to Asia, (the audio quality isn't very good and it is hard to comprehend what he is shouting about) which is a clear attempt at diffusion. And for the group as a whole, they aren't doing very much intimidation and mocking. The chants they were shouting were being shouted prior to the Native American walking into their crowd. There is no video evidence of them shouting derogatory or racist chants, as some have claimed.
     Regardless, the backlash against them has been absurd and undeserved. They have been denounced by social media and news outlets, shunned by their own school, deemed racist by many, and Nick Sandmann has even reportedly gotten death threats. All of these actions towards the boys are over-the-top responses to the scenario. And while the manner in which the boys dealt with the scenario could have been better, deeming teenage boys "racist" just because of what was, at worst, a mishandled situation by a group of minors who have been cast into a situation they are not prepared to handle is over the top, and we need to stop denouncing them in the manner we currently are.
    All in all, this reminds me of strikes that occurred by labor unions back in the Gilded Age, and the tensions that occured as a result of them.
 




Based from article:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-accused-taunting-native-american-protesters-breaks-silence/story?id=60512874