Covington students and Phillips the Indian drummer

So I must confess, I didn't really understand what all of the fuss was about on this one. I saw what I "thought" was the video in question, and had a lot of problems reconciling what I saw with what I was hearing.

To be clear the video I saw walked through the following events:

• I saw a large crowd of boys who were gathered in an area outside of some buildings. It was later determined that they were waiting for their busses.
• I saw some of them chanting and cheering (from most accounts they were chanting school spirit messages in response to a small group of protesters who were attempting to engage them).
• Then you saw a small group of people wander into the middle of the crowd. One would have been Phillips (who was carrying his drum) and there were two or three others carrying what appeared to be a video camera, with portable lights (like you would see a news crew carrying). 
• The man in question walked up to the boy wearing the MAGA hat and started pounding the drum and singing. The people behind turned on the lights and started filming.
• The video was not close enough to see much, other than the student in question just sort of stood there. Some of the other students close by started turning around and watching the man. Some of them started to clap along with the drum beat and doing some sort chanting or singing.

It was clear from watching this particular video (as I saw it) that the man in question was looking to get some sort of reaction either out of the boy in question, or others who were in the same crowd. I strongly suspect that this particular boy was chosen because he was wearing the MAGA hat. It was equally clear that the people with the video equipment were there to catch the action (or reaction) as it were.

Now the troubling part for me was that the stories I had heard was that this poor old Indian man was just minding his own business, singing a song and beating a tribal drum, when suddenly he was surrounded by a bunch of high school catholic hooligans who were openly threatening him. The picture of the Indian Drummer and the boy in the MAGA hat was sold to the general public as the boy getting in the drummer's face (as opposed to what had really happened - which was exactly the opposite).

Then you ended up with the Drummer telling people that all of these boys were mocking him, that he felt threatened by the boy in the hat, and that he felt that the crowd that had gathered around him was on the verge of a violent outbreak.

Of course the violent outbreak never took place. Catholic high school students are not generally prone to beating up old men for no reason. 

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Lastly it turns out that your impression of these events were likely determined by which of the two videos you saw. Those who saw the video I saw (which was taken with a cell phone from a ways away) would see things much like I did. There is no question that the instigator in this situation (right or wrong) was Phillips, not the Covington Students.

Those who saw the scripted video made by the videographers who were accompanying the Indian drummer likely saw exactly what the videographers wanted you to see. They saw a poor old Indian man beings surrounded, harassed, threatened, and mocked by a bunch of racist white privilege christian conservatives.

Whether or not you saw the kids as either somewhat amused and confused by the events, or mean and mocking also probably was determined by which of these videos you saw. It simply isn't clear from either video what was in the collective mindsets or what exactly was being chanted. In fact, it's hard to determine exactly what percentage of the overall crowd was even aware of the drummer in question.  Much of this is left up to the best guess of the person watching, and likely whatever preconceived mindset is about the people in question.

In other words, this is all bigotry and prejudices (assumptions and pre-judging).  But this is exactly the world we now live in folks and exactly why things are so tense.