Some people claim the kids wearing Make America Great Again hats at a march were mocking an elder. That is not accurate and viewers need to know what happened before the confrontation.

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) kids from Covington Catholic High School were at an anti-abortion March for Life event in Washington D.C and the Native American elder, Nathan Phillips, was participating in the Indigenous Peoples March the same day, according to Slate.

The MAGA kids were recorded in a way that made it seem like they were being rude to the elder but the many other recordings started showing the full story of what really happened.

According to Vox, there was a group of Black Hebrew Israelites, a group of black Americans who are descendants of ancient Israelites, that were insulting the MAGA kids. The kids were then saying things back to them and Phillips wanted to calm the heated situation.

According to The Stranger, four Black Hebrew Israelites were the people provoking the teens by yelling insults at them. They were adults who mishandled the situation by starting to act hostile to the teens. The MAGA kids started to make noise to drown out the rude comments made by the adults. That is when Phillips started to get in the middle so the teens didn’t do anything wrong.

The teen from Covington Catholic High School, Nick Sandmann, was just standing there watching the Native American banging the drums calmly, but the video went viral for showing the confrontation of Sandmann. People assume Sandmann is racist because he is wearing a MAGA hat and thought he was making fun of Philips.

The media blew the situation out of proportion, but it actually was because the kids wearing MAGA hats were seen as a symbol of racism and privilege. The whole situation wouldn’t have gone viral if it weren’t for the MAGA hats the students were wearing. While the hats may sometimes be hateful, they don’t automatically mean the person wearing it is a racist or a bad person. In America, we should not judge others for their own beliefs. We need to be more respectful toward others. We can’t just assume who someone is due to their clothing.

While there are many different perspectives on what truly occurred, Sandmann was falsely misrepresented as a racist, privileged teen being rude to the elder.

History often shows white people who are in the wrong, but the longer version of the video shows the whole story. At first, we perceived the kids were in the wrong but it was the adults causing the situation to heat up. The media didn’t show the whole story and the whole situation was made a bigger deal than it actually was, which was unjust.

This situation is especially important because in SLP we should not generalize others over what they are wearing as the media did to the kids wearing the MAGA hats. We should be respectful toward each other and not judge others quickly.