After two extremely contentious years — years that have long been boiling to fruition — it is no longer a rarity to find altercations rise through social media ranks faster than anyone can actually figure out what happened in the first place.
That’s exactly what happened last weekend. And unsurprisingly, the fallout is still online and in print everywhere.
By now, you’ve probably seen the thumbnail plastered across Twitter, Facebook and just about every national news organization’s home page — the image of a young, white teenager dawning a “Make America Great Again” hat, while wearing a tight smile before an older Native American man carrying a traditional drum.
Thanks to a short video clip and societal selective viewing, the narrative went a little like this: a group of young white high school men (many wearing the infamous red MAGA hats) harassed a single elderly Native American man, Nathan Phillips, at the National Mall in Washington DC. On the surface, it seemed the young men were outwardly taunting the peaceful looking man with the drum.
Hailey Stewart | Argonaut
In first news reports, Phillips told journalists he was being shouted at and surrounded by the young men so much so that he couldn’t exit the area.
However, there were more than two pieces of this odd puzzle social media and news media had yet to explain to readers.
Before the boys had even come into contact with Phillips, they were harassed with homophobic and racist language by a Black Hebrew Israelites group — a group characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a supremacist group engaging in anti-Semitism and homophobia. Notorious for rambunctious preaching on busy city streets, the group did just that to the high school boys, among other groups in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
In response, the boys began chanting school songs to drown out the noise.
Quickly, it became a convoluted clash of two very different worlds.
Eventually, a fuller version of the truth came out nearly two days later. Still, after numerous news reports unleashed on the masses and countless tweets blew up on the internet, there was little room to go back and start over. Later reports showed little of what Phillips first said to reporters actually occurred. Instead, his actions of jumping into the crowd while banging a drum and chanting were meant to diffuse the tension.
The high school boys were immediately painted as poster children for the racist right-wing agenda by some and Phillips was portrayed as a liberal instigator by others.
It’s 2019. After two long years of contention, why would anyone go to the Lincoln Memorial — during a weekend with a national March for Life rally, the annual Women’s March, the Indigenous People’s March and Martin Luther King Jr. Day — thinking it would be quiet?
Those 15-year-old boys most certainly did not think they would be entering a day filled with severe hate comments and death threats. While it was uncomfortable and confusing to be put in that situation and so quickly thrust into the limelight, that group of young men probably have a better understanding of their actions as well as others.
Among the many issues at play in this situation, the largest is the spreading of misinformation. But this time, people can’t simply blame only news organizations.
A single five-second video spread like wildfire all over the world. The worst part? There was no way to stop it.
Once it took flight, the left began berating the right. When the fuller story unfolded, the right blamed literally everything the left is often linked to, including the media.
News organizations can and should be better at developing stories while presenting the news quickly and accurately. That won’t always happen, because it can’t always happen.
If we expect ourselves to be politically and socially active and engaged, then that can’t just be when we’re marching or rallying. It begins with sharing — sharing stories and news that paint a broader picture and provide more context.
Unless we are the people part of the incident, we will still never fully know what exactly happened in front of the monument.
However, what we can do is try sharing what tells multiple sides of a story and listen when we’re given those sides. It might not be easy, but it’s better than turning against one another in the span of five seconds.
Hailey Stewart can be reached at [email protected]