In various parts of North America, there are movements that are fighting systemic issues of racism towards those of African decent that call themselves “Black Lives Matter.” Toronto has such a movement and they have been protesting negative police interactions with those of African decent for the last few weeks. But those efforts appear to have been derailed by one of their leaders who was found to have posted a Tweet that can easily be seen as offensive. Here’s what The Toronto Star had to say on this:
On Tuesday, Newstalk 1010 host Jerry Agar posted online a photograph of a printout of a tweet from the account of Yusra Khogali.
“Plz Allah give me strength not to cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz,” read the tweet from February.
The Star could not independently confirm the tweet’s veracity; it is not publicly available, as her account is set to private.
But it seems that Newstalk 1010 has verified that the Tweet in question is real because they found the Tweet and made it public. I should note that it was quickly removed and the account set to private after it the Tweet was discovered. But not before Newstalk 1010 did a screen capture of it.
From the perspective of the Black Lives Matter group, having someone who puts out a Tweet like this really doesn’t help their cause. And I think that their cause is important because they have something that needs to be discussed in an open and robust manner. But thanks to this Tweet, that discussion has been at the very least derailed. As it stands, neither the group of the individual behind this Tweet has made any comment in relation to this kerfuffle. But if they want to ensure that what they have to say gets heard, they need to have to say something and do that sooner rather than later. Also, this is the latest example of why you should be very careful about what you say online as it will come back to haunt you sooner or later due to the very public nature of social media.
UPDATE: This has now gotten a bit ugly on multiple fronts. First, there’s this from the person who posted the original offensive Tweet which Stephanie Smyth of CP24 found…. Though I wonder how she got this as the Twitter account of who is the person who posted the original Tweet is currently locked down. From the looks of it, it might have been e-mailed from an iPhone of someone who has access to her Twitter account:
Next up is of Newstalk 1010 who found the original Tweet. He had this to say:
And if you check the hashtag #BlackLivesMatterTO you will see lots of tweets from both sides of the argument. But sadly, the core issue which centers around racism towards those of African decent has now become the peripheral issue. That unfortunate, but not surprising because when you put out an offensive Tweet like the one on display here, you guarantee that this will be the result. This is why everyone, and not just people in the pubic eye need to make sure that their social media accounts are clean as one never knows if someone will go looking for something to nail you on. Clearly Mr. Agar feels that he’s good on that front. Though if he’s not, we’ll find out soon enough one suspects. As for the Black Lives Matter Toronto group, perhaps they need to focus on addressing this issue rather than taking shots at the person who called one of their leaders on an offensive Tweet.
Leader In Black Lives Matter Toronto Movement Called Out Over Racist Tweet
In various parts of North America, there are movements that are fighting systemic issues of racism towards those of African decent that call themselves “Black Lives Matter.” Toronto has such a movement and they have been protesting negative police interactions with those of African decent for the last few weeks. But those efforts appear to have been derailed by one of their leaders who was found to have posted a Tweet that can easily be seen as offensive. Here’s what The Toronto Star had to say on this:
On Tuesday, Newstalk 1010 host Jerry Agar posted online a photograph of a printout of a tweet from the account of Yusra Khogali.
“Plz Allah give me strength not to cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz,” read the tweet from February.
The Star could not independently confirm the tweet’s veracity; it is not publicly available, as her account is set to private.
But it seems that Newstalk 1010 has verified that the Tweet in question is real because they found the Tweet and made it public. I should note that it was quickly removed and the account set to private after it the Tweet was discovered. But not before Newstalk 1010 did a screen capture of it.
From the perspective of the Black Lives Matter group, having someone who puts out a Tweet like this really doesn’t help their cause. And I think that their cause is important because they have something that needs to be discussed in an open and robust manner. But thanks to this Tweet, that discussion has been at the very least derailed. As it stands, neither the group of the individual behind this Tweet has made any comment in relation to this kerfuffle. But if they want to ensure that what they have to say gets heard, they need to have to say something and do that sooner rather than later. Also, this is the latest example of why you should be very careful about what you say online as it will come back to haunt you sooner or later due to the very public nature of social media.
UPDATE: This has now gotten a bit ugly on multiple fronts. First, there’s this from the person who posted the original offensive Tweet which Stephanie Smyth of CP24 found…. Though I wonder how she got this as the Twitter account of Yusra Khogali who is the person who posted the original Tweet is currently locked down. From the looks of it, it might have been e-mailed from an iPhone of someone who has access to her Twitter account:
Next up is Jerry Agar of Newstalk 1010 who found the original Tweet. He had this to say:
And if you check the hashtag #BlackLivesMatterTO you will see lots of tweets from both sides of the argument. But sadly, the core issue which centers around racism towards those of African decent has now become the peripheral issue. That unfortunate, but not surprising because when you put out an offensive Tweet like the one on display here, you guarantee that this will be the result. This is why everyone, and not just people in the pubic eye need to make sure that their social media accounts are clean as one never knows if someone will go looking for something to nail you on. Clearly Mr. Agar feels that he’s good on that front. Though if he’s not, we’ll find out soon enough one suspects. As for the Black Lives Matter Toronto group, perhaps they need to focus on addressing this issue rather than taking shots at the person who called one of their leaders on an offensive Tweet.
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This entry was posted on April 6, 2016 at 10:45 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.