The OU Police Department is investigating an incident that occurred during the No Ban No Wall solidarity march at OU Feb. 2 between a demonstrator and two students not involved in the march.
In a now-deleted video taken by Austen Robinson, pre-law and political science freshman, a Native student directed racial slurs and threats at a white student holding an American flag. The Native student, Jesse Robbins, human relations graduate student, called Austin McKinney, accounting senior, a “pasty immigrant,” a “white mo**********” and threatened to “whoop (his) white ass.”
The 22-second video does not show whether McKinney did something to provoke Robbins’ words and does not show if McKinney retaliated after the exchange.
This video has since been deleted from Robinson's Twitter account.
However, another video, which was posted live on the Facebook page of Carbonated.tv, shows McKinney wearing an American flag, walking south along the east side of the South Oval before being approached by OU graduate Carey Flack recording video on a phone.
On video, Flack says Robinson and McKinney were “coming to terrorize the protest.” Flack and other marchers then surrounded McKinney and Robinson, who was holding a Donald Trump flag, and began to ask them questions.
Flack asks why they came to the rally, and McKinney answers that he is exercising his First Amendment right. She then asks Robinson if he is OK with paying for a wall between the United States and Mexico, and he does not answer. Flack then says again that the two are terrorizing the protest as they continue to walk and display their flags.
Later, a man with a bullhorn approaches McKinney and Robinson and says, “Trump is a racist and a bigot, and he breeds racism like you.”
“You support racism if you support Trump,” he continued. “That’s not true,” Robinson responded.
Further along in the video, Robinson has his Trump flag stolen and his white hat knocked off of his head by Ashley McCray of Indigenize OU. Some of the marchers celebrated after taking the flag and continued to as they followed McKinney and Robinson while they walked north down the South Oval. As they followed them, Flack asks McKinney, “How come you have more of a right to be in this country than others?”
“I never said that,” McKinney responded.
Eventually in the Facebook video, Robbins offers to box McKinney and/or Robinson, and says, “I’ll knock your white ass out.” The Twitter video and the Facebook video overlap at the point where you can hear Robbins tell McKinney and Robinson to go home. After Robbins was finished, Robinson said the two parties went their separate ways with no injuries.
Robinson also said two undercover police officers approached he and McKinney to let the protest pass.
“We’re not trying to make it a big deal or anything, we were just a little upset,” McKinney told The Daily. “We were actually kind of stunned that it happened to us. We didn’t really know what to say. We didn’t know what to expect, we didn’t know it would be like that, especially on campus and Oklahoma being the conservative state it is.”
“We were being open-minded and were being heckled,” McKinney said.
Robbins told The Daily via Facebook Messenger that he overreacted and lost his temper.
“I let anger get the best of me and I’m sorry I didn’t stay centered and balanced while resisting,” he said.
McKinney said he and Robinson left after the confrontation. Robbins has since deleted his Facebook account.
The Daily texted McCray three times and called her three times Feb. 3 for comment, but received no response. We will update this post as more information from the OUPD becomes available.
Dana Branham, Jesse Pound and Daisy Creager contributed to this report.
