Maybe Good Boys Start to Become Bad Men When the Wagons Circle

From ELLE

I brace myself every time I pass a group of teens. Teenagers have a sixth sense for what’s making you feel uncomfortable: your bad hair day, your try-hard shoes, the weirdly shaped shopping bag you’re trying to navigate through a crowded subway stop. More than once, a group of teens has pointed out my specific insecurity just as they’re walking by or getting off the train, leaving me to enjoy the sound of them laughing at me.

Introduce these citizens-in-training-with their risk-prone, group-thinking brains-into the political theater and it’s not surprising the results are ugly. The image of Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann smiling at Native American activist Nathan Phillips echoed historical images of young white people sneering at civil rights demonstrations. (The image above, from 1966, shows boys spitting on a car carrying civil rights demonstrators in Chicago.) I looked at Sandmann and thought of a young Brett Kavanaugh: watching something bad unfold, smug in his knowledge that it wouldn’t touch him, and that the person it was happening to mattered less than he did.

In a written statement, Sandmann’s defense was that he’s just a teenager, and adults started it. Black Hebrew Israelite protestors were provoking his school group; Phillips confronted him; his chaperones on the class trip to the anti-abortion March for Life sanctioned the “school spirit” chants (what a Tomahawk Chop has to do with Covington Catholic has not been explained). Bolstering his case are the hand-wringing commentators who say people rushed to judgment about Sandmann, “ruining a young man’s life.”

It’s aggravating to see people sympathize with Sandmann when young people’s lives are being ruined by way of the juvenile justice system and border separations. But the video of Sandmann and Phillips’s confrontation didn’t go viral because it appeared to show egregiously bad behavior that, with more context, was only sort of bad. As with the Kavanaugh allegations, the scene resonated because it was instantly recognizable and deeply familiar, from all angles. Sandmann’s smirk amid his friends’ chauvinist chants was an expression of the Trump platform-equality is for losers-through the uncannily precise lens of teenagers.

Coming so soon off of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, I am primed to see how white teens’ smugness greases the wheels of white supremacy, how white teens who bond by mocking disadvantaged people grow up to vote with one other’s interests in mind. But, like the stories about Kavanaugh and his friends' coded yearbook messages, the cruelty is so commonplace that it’s hard to suss out when and how one can intervene. Improving the future requires drawing lines around behavior that was “okay” when we were their age, or that we could see our brothers doing, in the hopes of stopping the conveyor belt of privilege that carries white men from incidentally thoughtless to powerfully bigoted. During Kavanaugh’s hearing, ELLE executive editor Emma Rosenblum asked, “When do good boys become bad men?”

The Covington Catholic School story seems to offer one answer: Maybe young, white men start to become bad political actors when the wagons start to circle, and they are invited to tune out the people telling them they’ve caused harm. If the harm they've caused wasn't a bonding experience in and of itself, the accusations of harm could become a kind adversity to overcome together. Or, as Elizabeth Schambelan put it in a piece on Kavanaugh for n+1, "webs of complicity - or as the men themselves would likely put it, brotherly bonds with one’s oldest pals - become embedded in larger networks through which an intangible currency circulates."

There were a few hours on Monday when I thought Sandmann’s Christian values and respect for veterans could signal a teachable moment. It’s not a crime to smirk, so Sandmann wouldn’t need to be as defensive as Kavanaugh. He could admit he had never been to a protest before, and he felt embarrassed and confused and smiled because he wanted to save face. He could say that, in retrospect, he sees how an unruly group of white people in Make America Great Again hats could be perceived as a counterprotest to the Indigenous People’s March. He could say his classmate’s taunts were out of line and he wished he’d stopped them.

By the time Sandmann was taping the TODAY show, he was working with RunSwitch, a public relations firm with ties to Mitch McConnell, and the opportunity for such a moment had probably passed. In the interview, Sandmann was careful not to smile or address the behavior of the classmates he stood with. He repeated his lines about adults provoking teenagers. When it came to the politics of the situation-the relative power of a group of young, white men “beating their chests,” as Savannah Guthrie put it-he talked only about both group's right to be there.

“Do you think if you weren’t wearing that hat things this might not have happened?” Guthrie asked.

“That’s possible,” Sandmann said, “but I would have to assume what Mr. Phillips was thinking and I’d rather let him speak for why he came up to us.”

Phillips has said he came up to Sandmann and his Covington classmates to use drums and prayer to mediate an escalating conflict between the students and other protestors, and that he doubts he could have a sincere conversation with Sandmann now that he is represented by a PR firm. Maybe Sandmann has respected Phillips’s first amendment right and listened to what he had to say. But his expertly coached answer misses the point. Guessing what others are thinking, and considering his actions in light of their thoughts, is exactly what his critics are asking him to do. It is the most basic mechanism of empathy.

Sandmann’s life is far from ruined. As a result of his viral fame, he’ll probably receive lots of positive reinforcement from people he may agree with about abortion but who will be using him cynically. Still, I think he’s been done a disservice. He’s young, and he’s new to this stuff, and he’s been crisis-managed through what might be his first ever political conflict. At an age where he ought to be his most dogmatic but also have his mind changed and eyes opened, he’s been given the talking points to avoid meaningful political interaction altogether.

('You Might Also Like',)

• 10 Pairs of White Sneakers That Go With Everything

• 50 Surprising Things You Never Knew About 'Sex and the City'

• 20 Serums to Solve All Your Skincare Problems