It had all the makings of the perfect 21st century crime. A seemingly incriminating social media video. That red hat. A victim from perhaps the single most oppressed class in American history, a Native American. A villain from its most privileged, a white male. And most damning, that incorrigible and unrelenting smile.
But as it turns out, hundreds of thousands or even millions of retweets of an encounter following the March for Life told the wrong story. Nick Sandmann, a junior from Covington Catholic High School, didn’t impede on the personal space of a Native American veteran and activist, Nathan Phillips. He didn’t gloat and glimmer with centuries of white privilege held over the head of a man whose people faced genocide at the hands of the colonizer. So it seems, the student with the now infamous smirk committed only one crime: existing.
