Towards Reconciliation

News

Cecile Favron / News Editor Henry Tran / Assistant News Editor

October 23, 2017 news@the-peak.ca

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Cecile Favron / News Editor Henry Tran / Assistant News Editor

News

news@the-peak.ca

Henry Tran Assistant News Editor

Agnetha de Sa SFU Student

Opinions

Zach Siddiqui / Opinions Editor

October 23, 2017 opinions@the-peak.ca

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ICING OUT POLITICS

The Pittsburgh Penguins are not just hockey players at the White House White athletes shouldn’t get to disengage themselves from difficult conversations about racism Rumneek Johal Peak Associate Sports appeal to me because they are a way to cast aside who you are and where you came from, and to be a part of something larger than yourself: a collective that is based on passion, mutual interest, and good-spirited competition. Sports are not political.

However, the ability to separate your identity as an athlete from your politics is a privilege.

Last month, the Pittsburgh Penguins publicly announced that they would be attending the White House, just a day after the president denounced and insulted black athletes protesting peacefully. This is a tonedeaf exercise of white privilege.

With approximately only 30 black players in the entire National Hockey League, why is it that we expect only the black athletes to engage with the difficult conversations of racism and oppression? Why is the Pittsburgh Penguins given agency to continue ‘business as usual,’ and

not have to reflect on the privilege of being exempt from such discrimination both on and off the ice?

Racism and oppression are embedded within our socio-political structures in ways that almost become commonplace. Stephen Curry said it best when he discussed the position that black professional athletes find themselves in: "When we're not in between these lines and with a jersey on, in [our casual dress], we could be targets.”

When white supremacists march on Charlottesville, it’s free speech; peaceful protests against police brutality by black athletes deems them “sons of bitches.” We relieve non-black individuals of the responsibility to speak up and advocate on behalf of their teammates or other athletes enduring racial abuse and oppression.

Sports are not political. But the ability for white athletes to remain oblivious to the American

The Penguins visiting the president and the first lady at the White House. president’s contention with black athletes is a marker of their ignorance. They are not personally impacted by the problem, which means they can ignore it more easily, but that doesn’t mean ignoring it is right.

Maybe being athletes doesn’t obligate them to be part of the conversation, but being people does.

Sidney Crosby is not evil, but we cannot claim that he is just “a hockey player going to the White House.”

Not in this political climate, and not ever. Colin Kaepernick is still without a job as a result of his protest, and

has been called a “son of a bitch” by the leader of the free world for exercising his First Amendment rights.

We must look at such actions, or inactions as what they are: a fear of disrupting the racist status quo. But if those with certain levels of privilege evade these conversations, the status quo persists. By remaining detached from such issues and continuing “business as usual,” the Pittsburgh Penguins are contributing to the problem rather than the solution.

If we continue brushing off the actions of non-black

Photo courtesy of Mandel Ngan individuals as unimportant to the conversation, we are enabling their complicity with the larger system at hand. Their identities are apolitical and therefore we see their stance as such; but that attempted detachment is, in and of itself, privilege.

So no, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins are not just hockey players attending the White House; they are part of a greater system in which those with privilege stay silent, while the oppressed have their voices dismissed.

TWEET BEAT

Newsworthiness is a stupid reason to let politicians flout the rules Twitter needs to stick to its guns and stick it to everyone, equally Zach Siddiqui Opinions Editor Social media has often been a voice for those who go unheard, but there are pretty much always rules in place for whatever social media platform you’re using, terms of conditions that you have to abide if you want to keep your borrowed voice.

Well, correction: there are terms and conditions you have to abide, if you’re not a socially privileged political figure with a penchant for verbal theatrics.

Twitter has been cavalier about doling out suspensions over things as simple as swearing at politicians or disliking Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” but it won’t ban the American president or remove his unsavoury missives, because his Tweets are “newsworthy.”

In a thread on the Twitter PublicPolicy account, responding to backlash to Trump’s “declaration of war” against North Korea, Twitter

explained their reasoning: “We . . . consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules . . . Among the considerations is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest . . . This has long been internal policy and we'll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it.”

I won’t get into the particular Tweets the president has made, because they — and he — are not the be-all end-all of what this is about.

Twitter’s ridiculous policy about user conduct, which apparently gives violent or abusive Tweets a pass if they seem like news, gives the elite freedom to say far more than the rest of us can get away with, for no cost, and undermines the very free speech that social media toutes as a goal.

First and foremost: having “internal policy” about Tweets is ridiculous. You cannot make public rules about what does and does not constitute misconduct, and then when people call you out on not following

the rules you agree on with your users, produce this new rule from nowhere as an exception. Until you actually have added this change to your “public-facing policies,” you should not be using it as justification.

When we agree to the terms and conditions, we are not just accepting that we’ll follow them; we’re expecting that both Twitter and fellow users will be held to the framework set by the rules. That’s not possible if Twitter’s going to shift its goalposts. How many other “internal policies” are guiding employee decisions about public accounts?

“Newsworthiness” is also an arbitrary category, in that it’s heavily dependent on the person making the Tweet, not the Tweets themselves.

As seen with “covfefe,” and with headlines like “Elon Musk’s strange, strange Ambien Tweet” out there, it’s pretty clear that, when you’re famous enough, anything you say becomes newsworthy. When you say something scandalous, you become newsworthy. A big name and a controversy to match it become a brand that sells your stuff as legitimate.

RESLUS / The Peak By allowing that to happen, we’re essentially saying that politicians can do what they want. If someone like Stephen Harper or Kellie Leitch was to, say, drop a string of racial slurs on Twitter and/or otherwise harass a fellow Twitter user, you know it would make the news. Would Twitter defend that, too?

When elite people in cyberspace have this inherent release from the

rules attached to their names, it further reinforces systemic, class-based privilege by letting them say things and commit offences that the rest of us can’t get away with.

I would like to call on Twitter and similar platforms not to show the infamous favouritism out of a misguided defence of the “public interest.” Keep things fair; that’s what’s really in the public interest.

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Opinions

Zach Siddiqui / Opinions Editor

opinions@the-peak.ca

Zach Siddiqui Opinions Editor

10 Arts

Alex Bloom / Arts Editor

arts@the-peak.ca

Aaron Richardson Staff Writer

Arts

October 23, 2017

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12 Sports

Andrew Ringer / Sports Editor

sports@the-peak.ca

Sports

Andrew Ringer Sports Editor

Lauren Mason SFU Student

October 23, 2017

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14 Humour

Janis McMath / Humour Editor

humour@the-peak.ca

Humour

October 23, 2017

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16 Diversions

Timothy Chow / Assistant Production Editor

production@the-peak.ca

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