Culture

This Week PR And DR Were Going AT IT – And I’m Not Just Talking About Baseball

By March 16, 2017 at 3:01 pm
DigitalSportsLounge

Making fun of each other relentlessly is something Puerto Ricans and Dominicans do often, especially when we are up against each other in world events. As was the case this week with the World Baseball Classic.

Now that el fuego has died down, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the major burns that were happening this week before, during, and after the game, because people were going HAM on Twitter.

As a Puerto Rican, I got a good laugh in myself during the baseball game. ‘Cause sometimes, mi gente, we be wildin’.

What you can’t see in this photo is the three piece Puerto Rico flag suit he’s wearing.

But some folks just don’t get the rivalry.

I get it though, similar food, similar music, similar love for platanos.

Some people were coming hard for the Puerto Rican Adobo love.

What? You never brushed your teeth with Adobo?

Folks fortunate to have a bit of both in their lives were clearly conflicted.

Looks like he’s wishing he’d never been born.

This Twitter user was disoriented by the whole ordeal.

It’s like when your parents are fighting and you’re just like “Can’t we all just eat some tres leche and relax?”

Even the anthem got geeked on.

This updated anthem is modern, and everyone can sing along. We should just vote and make it official already.

Even with all the Puerto Rico shade, some took it in stride and kept it moving.

It’s hard to knock Puerto Rican pride when we represent for breakfast.

My fellow NYC Boricua wasn’t having it.

Word, yo. Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the hood gotta look out for each other.

And then some folks spoke too soon.

In a thrilling game, Puerto Rico bested the Dominican Republic with a score of 3 to 1.

By the next morning, some were just tired of the comparisons and wanted peace and love.

Can’t we all just get along?

But for others, suspicion was on the rise.

I’d have been more nervous if it was a Morir Soñando.

Others were still licking their wounds from the loss and felt like throwing some more jabs.

To be fair, y’all know Dominican Spanish be fast AF sometimes.

By the following evening, everyone had said their piece, and the only sentiment that really matters was the one:

Mad corny, indeed, my friend. We are all poppin’.

READ: Mexicanos vs Puertorriqueños, Americanos vs Dominicans: 13 Storylines that Make the World Baseball Classic a Must-Watch

Were you watching this game while scrolling the beef on Twitter? Share with the links below!

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Rep. Ruben Gallego Broke Down Jared Kushner’s White Privilege In A Twitter Thread About Their Paths To Harvard

Things That Matter

Rep. Ruben Gallego Broke Down Jared Kushner’s White Privilege In A Twitter Thread About Their Paths To Harvard

By October 28, 2020 at 9:51 am
BY  | October 28, 2020 AT 9:51 am
Greg Nash / Pool / AFP via Getty Images

Jared Kushner recently made headlines for saying that Black Americans have to “want to be successful.” Kushner continued in the Fox & Friends interview saying that Trump policies are trying to help them with issues that “they’re complaining about.” Congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona took to Twitter to call out Kushner and his easy, money-paved path in life after the interview aired.

Rep. Ruben Gallego has a few words about Jared Kushner’s claim that Black Americans don’t “want to be successful.”

Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, was being interviewed by Fox & Friends when he suggested that Black Americans don’t want to successful. He added that the Trump administration has created policies to help Black Americans. Specifically, the Trump administration has created policies to help Black Americans overcome things that “they’re complaining about.”

The interview was immediately slammed by Democrats and activists as being tone deaf. Furthermore, the rhetoric is reminiscent of language used against the Black community for decades to justify policies that disenfranchised and injured the Black community.

Rep. Gallego was one of Kushner’s classmates at Harvard and the two had very different paths to the prestigious school.

Rep. Gallego created a Twitter thread to show the hoops he had to jump through in order to make it to Harvard. As a Latino from a middle class family, Rep. Gallego didn’t have a lot of the same luxuries afford to him like someone of Kushner’s background. The congressman’s story about his way to the Ivy League school is something a lot of people of color can relate to.

The story is an extension and deeper dive into the college admission scandal narrative.

Rep. Gallego detailed his four years in high school with the mission of making it to Harvard. For him, that meant studying for his exams for years with free and used test preps he could get his hands on. There was a community support to make it possible for him to get materials he needed.

According to Data USA, Harvard’s student body is heavily white. The data shows that 41 percent of students are white, 13.5 percent are Asian, 8.19 percent are Hispanic or Latino, and 5.35 percent Black or African-American.

Even the interviewing process was something so many other students didn’t have to contend with.

Some universities, especially ivy league schools, require prospective students to interview with alums and administrators. These interviews weigh heavily in the process and for Rep. Gallego, they were not easy to get to. He had to rely on public transportation to make it to his various interviews around Chicago.

Rep. Gallego spent four years getting ready to go to Harvard.

After four years of hard work and sacrifice, Rep. Gallego was accepted to Harvard. His path to Harvard was filled with friends and family helping him along the way, which is common in Latino communities. It is a story that many of us are familiar with but it isn’t a truly universal story, as Rep. Gallego points out about Kushner.

Kushner’s easy path to Harvard is why the congressman took issue with Kushner’s comments.

Documents show that Kushner got into Harvard after his father pledged a $2.5 million gift to be paid in annual installments of $250,000. Both of Kushner’s parents were also members of Harvard’s Committee of University Resources and donated to the school. In an interview with ProPublica, a former administrator at Kushner’s high school admitted that no one at the school believed that he got admitted on his own merit. The official said that neither his grades nor SAT scores warranted his admission into Harvard.

Rep. Gallego ended his thread asking people to donate to the Biden campaign and the United Negro College Fund.

Rep. Gallego is clearly not letting this story go by without weighing in. Kushner’s comments have set off a firestorm of frustration with people across the nation.

READ: College Admissions Scandal Mastermind Reportedly Told Parents To Lie About Ethnicity To Further Advantage Their White Children

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HarvardRuben GallegoJared KushnerCollegeTwitter

Twitter Has Busted a Ring of Fake Accounts That Posed As Black Trump Supporters

Things That Matter

Twitter Has Busted a Ring of Fake Accounts That Posed As Black Trump Supporters

By October 15, 2020 at 1:58 pm
BY  | October 15, 2020 AT 1:58 pm
Photo: George Frey/Getty Images

On Monday, Twitter announced that it has suspended 15 Twitter accounts of “Black Trump supporters” that they discovered were fake. The accounts were similar in nature, tweeting out nearly identical messages, like “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!” and “VOTE REPUBLICAN”. The accounts quickly amassed thousands of followers and retweets.

The fake “Black Trump Supporter” accounts were discovered by social media disinformation researcher Darren Linvill, who flagged the accounts and reported them to Twitter.

The accounts violate Twitter’s rule barring users from using the platform “in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience.”

The Twitter accounts sourced their profile photos through internet image searches. One profile photo even included the search term “black man photo” at the top of the profile photo–proving that someone stole the photo from the internet and (sloppily) cropped it. Others were revealed, via reverse-image searching, to be generic stock photos of Black people.

The accounts seemed to follow a pattern: the Black Trump supporters were devout Christians, veterans, blue-collar workers, police officers…you get the picture. 

“They are impersonating Black Trump supporters, Black authoritative figures such as veterans and police officers, and various prominent individuals in order to gain rapid traction and virality,” said cybersecurity manager Lee Foster to The Washington Post.

Linvill says that the accounts don’t necessarily appear to be a coordinated campaign, although he did find traces of the Russian alphabet  in the accounts’ online records. Linvill hypothesizes that the accounts might have had monetary motives–they often tweeted out links to buy Trump merchandise. 

Another theory is that, based on the timing, whoever created the fake accounts is trying to change what appears to be the persistent narrative that President Trump is racist. The accounts became much more active in recent months, around the time when Trump refused to condemn white supremacist groups on national TV. These “Black Trump supporters” make it seem like he actually has the support of Black Americans. 

But polls and surveys prove that Trump is highly unpopular among Black Americans. The Pew Research Center shows that 81% of Black voters support Biden in the upcoming election. 

These most recent fake Twitter accounts are one of the many ways that the Republican Party has been attempting to manipulate voters this election cycle. Along with spreading disinformation, the party has set up unsanctioned ballot drop-off boxes across California. The Governor of Texas, Rick Abbott (R) also made headlines recently for restricting the amount of official ballot boxes in Texas to only one per county–a move that critics slammed as a transparent attempt to suppress the Latino vote.

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Elections 2020Donald TrumpTwitter