Covington Kids Exonerated from Wrong-doing

[Guest]

Please. Your president is a master of the lying insult.

He's not your president too?

I had hoped you would rise above him but if you defend him and Prager your values and perspective are clear.

My values and perspective are as clear as yours. While I do defend Prager, I do not defend Trump

Congratulations on so much actual discussion, by the way.

Wait, I'm not sure of you're being sarcastic? You don't think I'm discussing or you do and you're really congratulating me on what you believe is a foreign thing?

I can't tell if he's my president or Putin's. You see, for me he can't be both.

Some of your "left" is actually trying to find out something about that. Right now I'm trusting in some actual conservatives who will put the Constitution before fealty to Trump. As per the oath they took.

[_honorentheos]

Living in any place filled with crowds seems to impart certain lessons early to self-aware individuals. As example, when a crowd of people is moving towards your general direction and up steps, it’s probably not the best choice to place yourself in front of one of them and then remain within inches, unmoving. Picking an alternate response is part of understanding common social contract behavior, especially if one is going to claim later that they thought doing so seemed ‘respectful’, or that they believed that the other person’s intent was to give them their own personal concert at a range of under 6 inches. Most folks get this figured out by the time they breach 4 feet in height.

That's not how it played out. If you watch the other videos, Philips moves with his group between the boys and the BHI while playing his drum and stands there playing for a while. As the boys start reacting to his playing by bouncing, clapping, and whatnot, he moves closer to them which they seem to be engaging with rhythmically. There's nothing in what is happening there that should be interpreted as he made a move to walk up the stairs and people should have cleared a path for him. When he and the kid (a legal minor) in the viral video end up face-to-face, almost every angle of it shows them just standing there as Philips drums and the kid looks at him. The smirk is not the entirety of his responses and largely he's standing face-to-face with the guy who moved in front of him. My original judgment based on what I had seen was he was acting like a bit of a tough guy whose response was to puff up and not back down when confronted. But it really doesn't look that way when looked at from multiple points of view and in the context of the full duration of the incident. Take from it what you will, the idea that he was confronting Philips r exhibiting dick-like behavior is not supported by the full scope of evidence. I'm a dick and know it. That kid did not behave like one.

[_Maksutov]

Living in any place filled with crowds seems to impart certain lessons early to self-aware individuals. As example, when a crowd of people is moving towards your general direction and up steps, it’s probably not the best choice to place yourself in front of one of them and then remain within inches, unmoving. Picking an alternate response is part of understanding common social contract behavior, especially if one is going to claim later that they thought doing so seemed ‘respectful’, or that they believed that the other person’s intent was to give them their own personal concert at a range of under 6 inches. Most folks get this figured out by the time they breach 4 feet in height.

That's not how it played out. If you watch the other videos, Philips moves with his group between the boys and the BHI while playing his drum and stands there playing for a while. As the boys start reacting to his playing by bouncing, clapping, and whatnot, he moves closer to them which they seem to be engaging with rhythmically. There's nothing in what is happening there that should be interpreted as he made a move to walk up the stairs and people should have cleared a path for him. When he and the kid (a legal minor) in the viral video end up face-to-face, almost every angle of it shows them just standing there as Philips drums and the kid looks at him. The smirk is not the entirety of his responses and largely he's standing face-to-face with the guy who moved in front of him. My original judgment based on what I had seen was he was acting like a bit of a tough guy whose response was to puff up and not back down when confronted. But it really doesn't look that way when looked at from multiple points of view and in the context of the full duration of the incident. Take from it what you will, the idea that he was confronting Philips r exhibiting dick-like behavior is not supported by the full scope of evidence. I'm a dick and know it. That kid did not behave like one.

Social media's Rashomon moment du jour.

[_honorentheos]

That's how easy it was to sway me and what it tells me is that I am human and not exempt from bias.

If you can't admit mistake and be self honest, you don't grow.

I've thought your responses on the threads were very self-aware. I certainly had my own preconceptions that were modified as more evidence came in. I don't think the lesson to be taken from this is that we should be immune to such attempts to play to our biases. Rather, we ought to be aware of how easy it is to do so, so holding back on making early judgments when we're not actually in the middle of an immediate need to fight or flee is probably wise.

[_Res Ipsa]

EA and Honor,

It looks to me like most of your disagreement flows from how each of you defines racism. Honor defines it more narrowly, requiring some degree of intent. EA defines it more broadly, not requiring intent. Because Honor defines it more narrowly, he sees it as significant moral failure. Because EA defines it more broadly, it will encompass behavior that is less morally objectionable. But you seem to me to be pretty close on the important questions here: what should have happened? What, if anything, should have happened to the participants in the incident?

[_Jersey Girl]

That appears to be how it functions for you, because you can't handle even some of the most obvious displays of overt racism being described that way because you view it as a nuclear bomb accusation only reserved for the most heinous expressions of racial contempt. That ends up creating a situation where any pointing out of ordinary racist behavior gets straw-manned into calling people the equivalent of Nazis showing up in arm bands to preach white supremacy. It's like that's the only kind of racism you are capable of seeing. So not even the literal equivalent of a minstrel display for Native Americans can be called racist because that's just going too far. The people doing it aren't literally the Klan or Nazis, obviously, so not racist.

Because you won't explain what's wrong with a person having a Confederate flag flying from their truck, which you clearly view as quite bad, it seems like you genuinely don't get that people use Confederate flag symbolism for things other than supporting the KKK or whatever it is you imagine.

But how are you functioning here, EA?

Symbols hold different meaning depending on the individual who uses them as a form of self expression and the point in time that they use them.

When I was a high school girl down the Shore, we wore surfer crosses that were previously held as symbols of Nazism. We gave no more thought to the correlation than the kids wearing MAGA hats probably did. To us they were new and different. They were cool. We freaking wore them with our summer tans.

Do you really think that the high school students who picked up MAGA hat souvenirs in DC are as intellectually and politically sophisticated as adults? Do you really think they wore them as symbols of racism?

We're in DC! Let's get Trump hats! Yeah, that'll be cool!

You don't give the high school students credit for thinking like the adolescents that they are. Executive function, EA.

Come on.

[_Maksutov]

EAllusion and Honor,

It looks to me like most of your disagreement flows from how each of you defines racism. Honor defines it more narrowly, requiring some degree of intent. EAllusion defines it more broadly, not requiring intent. Because Honor defines it more narrowly, he sees it as significant moral failure. Because EAllusion defines it more broadly, it will encompass behavior that is less morally objectionable. But you seem to me to be pretty close on the important questions here: what should have happened? What, if anything, should have happened to the participants in the incident?

Great points.

[_EAllusion]

EAllusion and Honor,

It looks to me like most of your disagreement flows from how each of you defines racism. Honor defines it more narrowly, requiring some degree of intent. EAllusion defines it more broadly, not requiring intent. Because Honor defines it more narrowly, he sees it as significant moral failure. Because EAllusion defines it more broadly, it will encompass behavior that is less morally objectionable. But you seem to me to be pretty close on the important questions here: what should have happened? What, if anything, should have happened to the participants in the incident?

I would agree with the talking past one another idea if not for the fact that I spelled out that I prescribe shame and contrition for the incident and he still believes that’s going way too far. It’s described as an elephant gun and treatment equivalent to what one would do with militant white supremacists. Taking this in, I note that things like racist mocking deserve to be shamed to which he replies nothing racist occurred. I think he is oblivious to how idiosyncratic that idea about racism is, but you can ignore the label. That just loops us right back to the underlying issue that he doesn’t see the behavior as all that bad to the point that even relatively mild disapprobation is hysterical overreaction.

[_Jersey Girl]

That's how easy it was to sway me and what it tells me is that I am human and not exempt from bias.

If you can't admit mistake and be self honest, you don't grow.

I've thought your responses on the threads were very self-aware. I certainly had my own preconceptions that were modified as more evidence came in. I don't think the lesson to be taken from this is that we should be immune to such attempts to play to our biases. Rather, we ought to be aware of how easy it is to do so, so holding back on making early judgments when we're not actually in the middle of an immediate need to fight or flee is probably wise.

Here's the thing. Why are we judging the actions of high school boys when we adults who are presumably operating with a fully functioning frontal lobe (questionable for some of us, I know) can't even stop ourselves from making a rush to judgement without pertinent facts?

It's easy to come in after the fact and analyze this to death. The boys in the large group didn't have the advantage of preparation or time to adjust on their side. They were caught up in a series of moments.

I'm sticking with that they simply reacted to what was taking place around them based on the behavior of the spontaneously shifting subgroups they became part of when confronted with groups of adults whose intentions they couldn't completely discern.

In other words, they're kids so give them the break they deserve.

[_EAllusion]

But how are you functioning here, EAllusion?

Symbols hold different meaning depending on the individual who uses them as a form of self expression and the point in time that they use them.

...

You don't give the high school students credit for thinking like the adolescents that they are. Executive function, EAllusion.

Come on.

Do you think Ralph Northam intended to express contempt for black people when he dressed in blackface for fun?

How relevant do you think the answer to that question is to whether we describe what he did as wrong and expect him to be contrite about it?