On October 31st, a parent sent out an inflammatory tweet through the Purples Baseball Twitter account. The attached picture depicts a player on the team, who is white, wearing a costume caricaturing Mexican culture, complete with a poncho and sombrero. The caption accompanying the image reads, “I almost hit one out. But someone built a wall.” After backlash, administrators reviewed the tweet and ordered the team to take it down, which they promptly did while issuing no apology or other words on the matter.
On first glance, the most notable thing about this tweet might be the picture. However, the topic of controversial and/or racially-charged Halloween costumes is well-trodden territory for opinion writers, with a new controversy reviving the issue every year. This year alone amassed several, most notably Megyn Kelly’s comments in defense of blackface that resulted in NBC firing her. Better writers than I have written many a screed on the harms of this cultural phenomenon, and given that this example involved a student, one could possibly excuse the choice of costume on the grounds of ‘not knowing any better.’ The caption is another story.
Political messaging, whether explicit or coded, is risky ground for anyone to tread, especially online. Social media has fundamentally changed the political landscape, both in terms of campaigns and in terms of expressing opinions. Anyone can express any opinion at any time with - despite the claims of most tech companies - very little effective moderation. At the same time, however, every comment is permanently accessible and under constant scrutiny, both from those aforementioned content moderators and, often more importantly, the capricious court of public opinion. With that in mind, a Tweet like this, from an official school account, no less, displays at the very least a lack of foresight and/or understanding as to how the culture of social media operates.
The Gem reached out to the baseball team for comment but received no timely response. For their part, the administration has expressed their desire to prevent incidents like this, especially on school-affiliated accounts such as Purples Baseball. Principal William King said, “We made sure to have [the tweet] taken down and addressed that we shouldn’t be tweeting out inappropriate subject matter from one of our accounts, and we want to make sure that we’re modelling the proper use of social media for our students and for the community.” However, King described the constant influx of posts from students as “like a waterfall” and emphasized the difficulty in monitoring every instance of online insensitivity.
King’s words ring true on a larger scale, as does the lesson this Tweet may teach. As in the real world and perhaps even moreso, nothing on social media exists in a bubble. This isn’t a matter of outrage culture or so-called censorship; both are their own issues that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to delegitimize this one. Nor would I call this a matter of left-wing or right-wing politics. This is simply a matter of social skills, of a conversational art often lost on social media users: expressing one’s opinion in an appropriate, articulate, well-timed fashion. Despite the benefit of relative anonymity and inefficient regulation, basic social cues still apply on social media, and all users must either keep this in mind or accept the natural consequences of breaking them.
By Abby Adams-Smith