Teenagers and Spaces

Liesl Stewart

May 2

This Lenten season was a time for examining my thoughts and words. I found myself reflecting on the Covington students/ Nathan Phillips interaction. I was in Arizona when it happened, and had just participated in the Women’s March. There were a couple smirky MAGA-wearing teenage boys walking among us the whole time. We marchers peacefully left them to exercise their right to hold their space among us.

Later I watched the initial footage of the MAGA-wearing Covington teenager and Nathan Phillips, and did what I really try not to do any more: I immediately posted my disgust, instead of first sitting with my thoughts. I’m a reflective thinker, so it usually takes me a long time to sit with something and form opinions. (But once opinions are formed, admittedly, I feel them very deeply and stubbornly.) I found the interaction viscerally painful to watch: I don’t think a MAGA hat is neutral for many people of color, native Americans, or immigrants to the US; I think it’s often interpreted as tacit or outright support for racism, bigotry, xenophobia, white supremacy. (It’s not neutral for me either!) And I didn’t at all like watching the white teenager so arrogantly (my opinion, I know) hold his space in the face of an older Native American man.

But I regret posting what I did at the time — a friend challenged me on what I said on the post, and we ended up having a longer, helpful exchange about it. I felt heard by her; but more importantly, I listened to her. She was worried about the teenagers, their brains that are still forming, and many people shaming them so publicly. She said, “What if you’re wrong??” [-about my assessment of the situation]. I’ve come to believe it doesn’t matter even if I were to be right. They are teenagers, their brains are still going to be developing for some years, and it wasn’t helpful to go after them so publicly. My friend was right to challenge me. So I deleted any related posts about it on my wall, and I am contrite that I posted with such condemnation about teenagers.

As sorry as I am about my initial post, in the aftermath I have had time to reflect on what happened.

In the aftermath, watching the full footage, I chose to listen more closely to reactions and commentary from people of color than from white people.

In the aftermath, I do have opinions about the teenagers’ public statements, and whether they show self-reflection with humility or not, and whether it seems the adults in their lives have guided them well in this or not.

In the aftermath, I have been angry with white friends who have decided they understand this incident only as overblown, and are plenty smug in their tidy summations.

But mostly, in the aftermath, I am grieved by the many white adults angrily defending these specific teenagers in hard confrontations with adults, when it’s clear their outrage was not also extended to some other specific teenagers in their hard confrontations with adults. I’m talking about Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown, African American teenagers, whose brains were also still developing, who also should have rightfully expected to hold their space among adults — and then lived to walk away.

As a Xhosa friend here in Cape Town reflected to me, there’s so much that could be said about how, in contrast to the Covington teens, these latter three teenagers weren’t part of a system that would allow them the space to self-actualize into adulthood. True, when they weren’t given the public benefit of the doubt even for their right to live.

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