When a video went viral that supposedly showed white high school students wearing pro-Trump hats getting in the face of an elderly Native American activist, many online compared the teenagers to everything from Nazis to the Ku Klux Klan . The social media mob branded these kids hateful white supremacists immediately and ferociously .

When a longer video emerged later showing a fuller context that largely exonerated the students from what they had been accused of, it appears that the young man receiving the most venom, Covington Catholic High School junior Nick Sandmann, was actually trying to defuse the situation. Sandmann released a statement Sunday saying exactly that.

“I was not intentionally making faces at the protester. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation,” Sandmann said. “[I] do not have hateful feelings in my heart."

Still, the initial reaction to the most widely spread image, a white teen in a MAGA hat appearing to smirk at an older man of color, was infuriating. I became angry upon seeing it before learning the larger story.

It’s not an unreasonable reaction to have without also having all the facts. It’s particularly reasonable if you’re a racial minority.

Or as black pastor and activist Bishop Talbert Swan put it on Twitter:



I don’t care what the hell y’all say. If wypipo can view young Black boys in hoodies as dangerous, and even kill them because of it (#TrayvonMartin), don’t tell us we can’t perceive a group of white boys in the modern equivalent of a klan hood, MAGA hats, as a threat. — Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) January 21, 2019



Swan has a valid point, one brought up more than once on social media.

I’m a white libertarian conservative. I know plenty of nonracist, well-meaning young conservatives who admire the president even to the point of wearing his signature red hat. I know through experience that most pro-Trump young people who present themselves in this manner are not remotely equivalent to the white supremacists and neo-Nazis that marched in Charlottesville , Va., two years ago, where a young woman was murdered by a racist.

I know that. But would everyone, necessarily?

Because of my background, I am more easily able to put myself in Nick Sandmann’s shoes. He could have been my son. There’s more to his story than his hat, smirk, and the color of his skin, though that’s all many continue to see in this tense moment.

Similarly and to Swan’s point, how many conservatives drew their own conclusions about the late Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old kid, close in age to Sandmann, based on his appearance?

“You dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug,” Geraldo Rivera infamously said on Fox News in 2012. Ted Nugent called Martin a “Gangsta wannabe, Skittles hoodie boy,” referring to the candy the teen purchased. The constant anti-hoodie drumbeat targeting Martin was relentless on the Right during that time.

Conservatives spent nearly a year-and-a-half smearing a dead teenager while turning his problematic gunman (“problematic” is an understatement , though George Zimmerman was found not guilty) into a hero .

But how many black Americans, then and now, can put themselves in Trayvon Martin’s shoes? How many could imagine Trayvon being their kid ? Could their perception of the perils young black men face in society be significantly different than that of predominately white conservatives?

How observers perceived the deceased Martin at that time skewed significantly depending on one’s political leanings .

The same is true today of the controversy involving the Catholic teenagers, much of it based on appearance. The Trump “Make America Great Again” hat has become a political flashpoint, just as Martin’s hoodie became a political symbol too.

To many people (too many) Trayvon Martin will forever be just a scary black “thug” who got what he deserved, just as many will continue to insist that Nick Sandmann is merely a scary white terrorist who deserves whatever misfortune comes his way.

We could all do more to judge people by the overall content of their character, rather than the color of their skin or choice of headwear. Much of the criticism in both cases says far more about the irrational prejudice of critics than the actual lives and experiences of these young men.

Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.