A bizarre tweet about girls’ bathrooms backfires on Oklahoma’s education czar

Ryan Walters — the Oklahoma Republican education official who made headlines during his campaign by falsely claiming that America’s schools identified as cats — has become the center of controversy again, this time over a bizarre tweet.

Early Saturday evening, Walters, Oklahoma’s secretary of education and state superintendent of public instruction, posted a tweet from her campaign report, which features a black-and-white image of a high school girl washing her hands in a bathroom while two other girls look at each other suspiciously in the mirror.

The image included the words “Student safety against the liberal agenda.” In the same tweet, Walters wrote, “I will always fight for students.”

The ambiguity of the tweet left it open to interpretation, especially since the girl at the sink is white, while both girls looking at her appear to be people of color.

Walters’ post was challenged an op-ed in Tuesday’s The Oklahomanthe largest newspaper in the state, which called on him to tone down his rhetoric or resign.

“There is nothing exemplary about Walters’ involvement in Saturday’s tweet. It is time for Oklahomans to take a position of leadership that exudes decency and competence from the superintendent and demand that he end his derogatory rhetoric or resign,” the editorial said. “It would be the best antidote to this metastatic venom, a good place to start.”

The state Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

Many people on Twitter saw Walters’ post as racist.

“Saving white girls from non-white girls, just the hero we need.” said one user sarcastic.

“So no mixed race toilets?” wrote another. “Do you repeat the quiet part out loud?”

Others, pointing to a “Did you wash your hands?” sign visible in the photo, he jokingly speculated that Walters was rebelling against basic hygiene. “Rights or not, people should wash their hands” one user replied.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the tweet had generated more than 1,300 comments and 175 likes and had been viewed more than 1 million times.

This isn’t Walters’ first brush with controversy. He was an outspoken supporter of school vouchers, which rural schools support in a state of hate, and often spoke out against “critical race theory,” an academic term that conservatives have adopted as an umbrella term for almost everything an educator recognizes the existence of systemic inequality.

Walters narrowly won the Republican nomination for superintendent, but easily won the general election in the deeply culturally conservative state.

In his general campaign, he said a former colleague told him there was a meeting about students at a colleague’s school who would identify as cats and asked to use litter boxes. The superintendent of the former Walters School District in McAlester said no such meeting had ever taken place.

Walters and his rhetoric have even been cited by Democrats following Oklahoma’s two recent failed attempts to land a battery manufacturing facility. In one case, a Panasonic plant eventually went to nearby Kansas, and just days ago Volkswagen said it would build in Ontario, Canada, instead of Oklahoma.

Representative. of State Cyndi Munson (Oklahoma City), oThe Oklahoma House Democratic leader said, “If we want big companies like Volkswagen to choose Oklahoma over other states and countries like Canada, we need more than tax incentives,” referring to $700 million in tax breaks. taxes offered by Oklahoma. for the Volkswagen plant.

“We need lawmakers to stop making laws that limit access to health care for women and transgender people in Oklahoma,” Munson said. “We need the governor and the state superintendent of public education to stop working to define and report on our public schools.”

Regardless of what Walters’ tweet actually intended to convey, some Twitter commenters were simply dumbfounded by his poor execution.

AS a person put it: “That’s five for the design intern who clearly hates you.”