Covington Catholic’s Nick Sandmann: ‘I Would Not Be Canceled’ – By Robby Soave (Reason) / Aug 25 2020
Wrongly maligned by the media as a racist in a MAGA hat, the kid is now a celebrity speaker at the Republican National Convention.
On January 18, 2019, a misleading viral video briefly transformed a Catholic high school teenager into the smirking face of racial aggression in Donald Trump’s America—an erroneous judgment that quickly collapsed upon scrutiny. Today, that teenager, Nick Sandmann, was a featured speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
“While the media portrayed me as an aggressor with a relentless smirk on my face, in reality the video confirms I was standing with my hands behind my back with an awkward smile that hid two thoughts: Don’t further agitate the man banging a drum in my face, and never do anything to embarrass your family, your school, or your community,” said Sandmann in his remarks.
Sandmann’s summary of his ordeal was accurate. After attending a pro-life rally in Washington D.C., Sandmann’s class decided to visit the Lincoln Memorial, where they encountered a group of provocateurs called the Black Hebrew Israelites. This group antagonized the boys for over an hour, but despite incessant taunts and insults from the black nationalists, neither Sandmann nor anyone else in his group took the bait. They were then approached by Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist, and his entourage. A video of this encounter made it appear like the Covington kids targeted Phillips for racial harassment, and that Sandmann specifically had chosen to face down the man and block his path. Phillips himself encouraged this false interpretation; in reality, the students were mostly just confused about why Phillips had decided to march through their midst while chanting and drumming. Sandmann didn’t do anything wrong at all.
Continue to article: https://reason.com/2020/08/25/nick-sandmann-rnc-spech-republican-convention-covington/
