In a different reality, I too may have worn a Red Hat
For most of my childhood, I lived right next door to Park Tudor School in Indianapolis, a lush, sprawling campus that used to be the Eli Lilly family's apple orchard and country retreat. My parents both taught there. As far as I was concerned, that meant we owned the place. My friends and I made up a Frisbee golf course around the campus. We went sledding on the hills in winter. We launched model rockets off the athletic fields. It was our back yard and playground for years.
One time, my brother and I were invited to join a game of Capture the Flag some friends were planning to play on the campus after dark. The thought that such a game might not be a good idea never occurred to us. It was our back yard and our playground. Why couldn't we do it?
Well, the police officers who showed up after about half an hour didn't see it that way. And they weren't impressed when I tried to tell them my parents worked there, so everything was all right. Imagine that! These police officers were armed - I clearly remember seeing one of their guns - but they never made any kind of move to draw those weapons. They ordered us to clear out, and that was that. The incident never even merited a blurb in the newspaper, let alone a mention on TV.
This past week, I've been thinking about that time, and now I wonder... What if we hadn't been a bunch of white kids? What if we'd all been African-Americans? How would things have played out then?
Can you imagine the headlines? "POLICE BREAK UP GANG OF THUGS AT ELITE PRIVATE SCHOOL! VANDALISM PLOT THWARTED!"
Can you imagine what might have happened to a mouthy, know-it-all kid like me, if more than just my name had been Black? I could have been wrestled to the ground. I could have been arrested. I could have been shot.
We can't know what was in the mind of each and every one of those Covington Catholic High School children we all saw in Washington DC last weekend, but I can guess at some things that are true for most of them to one degree or another. As white boys, they probably walk around feeling like they own the place most of the time, because no one has ever told them otherwise. They are men. Perhaps they've been told that it's wrong for women to have authority over men - that's not uncommon in conservative Christianity. They are also white. This land - America - is theirs, and has always been theirs. Never mind people like Omaha elder Nathan Phillips, whose family has been here far longer than any of theirs.
Nicholas Sandmann, the boy who has become the public face of the Covington kids, says he had "every right" to be in the middle of the confrontation, and every right to stand his ground. Well of course he feels that way - just as I once felt we had "every right" to play Capture the Flag after dark on "my" school campus.
In this context, the fact that many of the boys wore red "Make America Great Again" hats makes perfect sense. In large parts of society, the Red Hat has come to be viewed as a symbol of unabashed racism - but not everyone has that viewpoint, or is even aware of it. To some, the Red Hat just means they're part of the team. If Richard Nixon had invented them, I might have worn one as a kid myself. (Not Reagan, though - by 1980 I was too afraid of being drafted to support him.)
We can't know what was in the mind of each and every one of those children. Some are probably on the way to becoming true believers in white male supremacy, but in all likelihood most of them just see it as "the way things are." They are children, and can be forgiven for not grasping the bigger picture yet. But the innocence of childhood doesn't last forever. If children aren't taught properly, chances are they will learn badly. What kinds of lessons will they draw from their DC adventure? What kinds of lessons will the adults in their lives try to make of it?
As for myself, I like to think I was raised pretty well - but I wasn't raised perfectly. I had blind spots that I've only started realizing recently. It shouldn't have taken forty years for me to think about how our Capture the Flag game might have gone if we hadn't been white, or about what that difference says about our society. We need to do our best to see that today's kids don't take as long to learn such important lessons.
One time, my brother and I were invited to join a game of Capture the Flag some friends were planning to play on the campus after dark. The thought that such a game might not be a good idea never occurred to us. It was our back yard and our playground. Why couldn't we do it?
Well, the police officers who showed up after about half an hour didn't see it that way. And they weren't impressed when I tried to tell them my parents worked there, so everything was all right. Imagine that! These police officers were armed - I clearly remember seeing one of their guns - but they never made any kind of move to draw those weapons. They ordered us to clear out, and that was that. The incident never even merited a blurb in the newspaper, let alone a mention on TV.
This past week, I've been thinking about that time, and now I wonder... What if we hadn't been a bunch of white kids? What if we'd all been African-Americans? How would things have played out then?
Can you imagine the headlines? "POLICE BREAK UP GANG OF THUGS AT ELITE PRIVATE SCHOOL! VANDALISM PLOT THWARTED!"
Can you imagine what might have happened to a mouthy, know-it-all kid like me, if more than just my name had been Black? I could have been wrestled to the ground. I could have been arrested. I could have been shot.
We can't know what was in the mind of each and every one of those Covington Catholic High School children we all saw in Washington DC last weekend, but I can guess at some things that are true for most of them to one degree or another. As white boys, they probably walk around feeling like they own the place most of the time, because no one has ever told them otherwise. They are men. Perhaps they've been told that it's wrong for women to have authority over men - that's not uncommon in conservative Christianity. They are also white. This land - America - is theirs, and has always been theirs. Never mind people like Omaha elder Nathan Phillips, whose family has been here far longer than any of theirs.
Nicholas Sandmann, the boy who has become the public face of the Covington kids, says he had "every right" to be in the middle of the confrontation, and every right to stand his ground. Well of course he feels that way - just as I once felt we had "every right" to play Capture the Flag after dark on "my" school campus.
In this context, the fact that many of the boys wore red "Make America Great Again" hats makes perfect sense. In large parts of society, the Red Hat has come to be viewed as a symbol of unabashed racism - but not everyone has that viewpoint, or is even aware of it. To some, the Red Hat just means they're part of the team. If Richard Nixon had invented them, I might have worn one as a kid myself. (Not Reagan, though - by 1980 I was too afraid of being drafted to support him.)
We can't know what was in the mind of each and every one of those children. Some are probably on the way to becoming true believers in white male supremacy, but in all likelihood most of them just see it as "the way things are." They are children, and can be forgiven for not grasping the bigger picture yet. But the innocence of childhood doesn't last forever. If children aren't taught properly, chances are they will learn badly. What kinds of lessons will they draw from their DC adventure? What kinds of lessons will the adults in their lives try to make of it?
As for myself, I like to think I was raised pretty well - but I wasn't raised perfectly. I had blind spots that I've only started realizing recently. It shouldn't have taken forty years for me to think about how our Capture the Flag game might have gone if we hadn't been white, or about what that difference says about our society. We need to do our best to see that today's kids don't take as long to learn such important lessons.
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