Advertisement

Pinellas School Board candidate criticized for tweets on Muslims, black people

 
Robert J. Beal is one of four candidates in the Dist. 1 race for Pinellas County School Board. [SCOTT KEELER   |   Times]
Robert J. Beal is one of four candidates in the Dist. 1 race for Pinellas County School Board. [SCOTT KEELER | Times]
Published Aug. 4, 2016

On the same day at least 84 people were killed and hundreds more were injured after a man plowed his truck into a crowd in Nice, France, Robert J. Beal had something to share with his six Twitter followers.

"Death cult at it again in France. 80 dead. When will people wake up to this evil religion ?" wrote @realbeal28 on July 14.

Ten days later, he replied to a tweet by Marc Lamont Hill, a black author and professor at Morehouse College, with "Your PHD is worthless. You want the black and poor to stay on the PLANTATION. Your not smart enough to realize this concept."

When Hill tweeted back correcting Beal's grammar, Beal fired back: "Get off the plantation first, then make corrections. LOL !!!"

Dozens of Hill's Twitter followers took notice, and so did Jinia Parker, a 42-year-old nanny living in Clearwater who wanted to learn more about the Pinellas County School Board candidates on the August ballot.

Beal, who turns 46 on Thursday, is a Marine veteran, a St. Petersburg College student and a father advocating for his special needs daughter. He announced his candidacy for the School Board District 1 at-large seat, a countywide race, in June.

Compelled by Beal's personal story of his daughter, Parker wanted to learn more about him. Finding little about Beal online, she took to social media and found public strings of "enraging" tweets with his Twitter biography attached: Running for District 1 School Board Pinellas County Florida.

She scanned his Twitter feed and found partisan tweets by a candidate running for a nonpartisan office. He heralded Dinesh D'Souza's documentary Hillary's America, and congratulated a Fox News host for being in the "liberals cross hairs." One tweet from October 2015 called New York Daily News reporter Shaun King an "a------." She took screenshots of the tweets and later shared them on her social media accounts.

After Parker emailed Beal to confirm that @realbeal28 was his account, she noticed he had deleted most of his tweets.

Referring to the candidate, Parker said in an interview, "You were on Twitter very little and every single thing you did was racist and offensive and idiotic," she said. "And he wants to be in charge of our kids. Like these kids don't have enough going on in education now we have somebody up there who is offensive in every way."

Reached Wednesday, Beal confirmed that it was his Twitter account and that he did write and then delete the tweets, but said he stood by what he tweeted.

Explaining the "death cult" comments alluding to the Islamic religion, Beal said there was a distinction between "fundamentalist Muslims and progressives."

"There is a distinction, definitely," he said. "There aren't Catholics on 9/11. There's not Catholics on San Bernandino. Those in Paris, it's connected to the Muslim faith. They are the fundamentalists. There's a difference between the fundamentalists and the progressives, so I stand by the difference. Maybe I didn't make it clear, but there's a difference."

As for the "plantation" comment, Beal referenced D'Souza's documentary where D'Souza, "elegantly and educationally connected the ghettos basically to the plantation," Beal said.

"My belief is that the government and that the Democrats particularly want the people in the ghettos to stay dependent on the government," he said.

Asked if he thought his tweets could alienate Muslim and black students and their families, Beal said: "If the truth alienates people, then the truth alienates people."

The Pinellas County school district does not keep track of the religious affiliations of its students, but the Association of Religious Data Archives in 2010 estimated that 13,372 Muslims live in Pinellas. About 19 percent of the district's population in the 2015-16 school year was black. The district is under a federal civil rights investigation and is a defendant in federal and state lawsuits alleging it is shortchanging black students.

"I don't think I said anything wrong," Beal said. "I'm not like … calling for violence or anything."

He added: "If they want someone who's going to say the right thing and go with the flow, then I'm not the person. Thinking differently is not a bad thing."

Beal is running in the most competitive and crowded race out of three on the August primary ballot. District 1 has no incumbent and four candidates.

His opponents said they were troubled by the tweets.

Candidate Matt Stewart, a deputy director at the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections office and an adjunct professor at St. Petersburg College, said a parent brought the screenshots to his attention.

"I think it has no place in not only the political arena but anywhere in Pinellas," Stewart said. "The minute we marginalize anyone based on race or religion or sexual orientation, then we all lose."

Bill Dudley, a longtime Northeast High teacher and coach and former St. Petersburg City Council member also in the District 1 race, said he did not want to pass judgement on Beal.

"He made the statement and he's going to have to live with it and the ramifications of what he said," Dudley said. "I obviously don't condone that, but it's for him to explain himself and I'm not here to pass judgement."

"He's been playing us," said candidate Joanne Lentino, a retired Gulfport Elementary teacher. "He has been playing the parent that is concerned about his daughter and how the daughter's been treated, and he's using this as his own personal platform for hate and vitriolic comments."

Contact Colleen Wright at cwright@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8643. Follow @Colleen_Wright on Twitter.