There is no context that makes their behavior acceptable.They were already trading taunts with a group of Black Hebrew Israelites, which are a designated extremist group.
The fact is that the Indigenous Peoples March was the only group who had a permit to be at the Lincoln Memorial on that day at that time.
Not Covington Catholic High School. Not the Black Hebrew Israelites.
As such, they were the only people who were when and where they were supposed to be.
In the video, the BHI members can repeatedly be heard telling the CCH students to stay back, to keep their distance, and to stop closing in on them. Chaperones are on video telling the boys to back away from them.
Mr. Phillips marched between the two groups, playing his drum, and performing a chant for peace, and the boys closed in around him, just as they had done to the BHI members, and started performing mock rain dances and tomahawk chops.
That is racist no matter how you cut it.
Some of the boys claimed they were instructed to wait in that location for their bus, but the March for Life had been over for 2-and-a-half hours at the time of filming, and chaperones can be seen on video encouraging the CCH students to engage the BHI members.
One instructs them to taunt the BHI members by chanting their school fight song, and another tells the BHI members that "Jesus was white" before high-fiving another adult.
People want to know where were the adults? Right there, participating in and encouraging it.
The mother of one of the students inadvertently revealed her own xenophobia in calling the Black Hebrew Israelites "black Muslims," and the Indigenous Peoples March "Native American Supremacists."
These boys were engaging a violent Black Nationalist group that is on an extremist hate watch, and are lucky none of them got hurt.
This is the same high school that banned its class valedictorian from giving a graduation speech because he is gay, and whose star basketball player was just charged with rape, so spare me your fake indignation.
These are the little angels you are defending: