In a viral TikTok posted this week, a user sparked controversy after publicly accusing a college baseball player of wearing a Confederate flag hat at a party.
The video posted by Yas (@yaaszss), which now has over 303,400 views, shows a man wearing a Confederate flag baseball cap being recorded at what appears to be a party. The video then shows a screen recording of an Instagram account, which is now private, of a college baseball player named Tyler whom the user alleges is the man in the video.
The Daily Dot has not been able to identify for certain whether the man in the Confederate flag hat is a baseball player at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, as the TikToker alleges.
“Don’t post it I’ll lose my scholarship,” Yas captioned the video, “The way he didn’t want to be seen with it yet he was wearing it.”
The viral TikTok sparked debate in its comments section. Many users praised Yas for exposing Tyler.
“What a Girlboss moment u just had queen,” one user commented.
“Doing God’s work,” another responded.
The Confederate flag is associated with racism, slavery, white supremacy, and anti civil rights violence in the United States. The flag’s defenders in recent years often contend that it is a marker of Southern “heritage“. Those who promote the flag on clothing are often met with outrage.
But some people said that Yas shouldn’t have revealed Tyler’s alleged identity online.
“I ain’t agree with his hat at all but I think it’s messed up to ruin someone’s chances at college no matter how wrong their political view is,” someone criticized.
“It’s a hot topic but no one should be cancelled over it,” another person replied.
Others said he had it coming.
“You’re doing him a service tbh. He had to grow up and learn actions have consequences at some point,” one user pointed out.
The Daily Dot reached out to Yas via email, and Tyler via Instagram message for comment. We’ve also reached out to College of Lake County.
Update April 4, 5:34pm CT: The content creator behind the video sent a statement to the Daily Dot. We are publishing the whole thing for context and clarity: “I don’t believe I am ruining his shot at anything for he has well lost his scholarship with his previous school for reasons I don’t even need to mention. He is currently at the College of Lake County which was made public on his Instagram. The context of this video would be as follows. The video was not taken at a party. The video was recorded during a Class Trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where one of the topics we were learning about was the history behind this flag and the meaning behind it now. I took the video and quoted him saying “don’t post it I’ll lose my scholarship”, the scholarship being for the school he attended previously. After the video was posted he reached out to me to take it down. I asked him if he was admitting he was wrong . After brief back and forth texts, I never heard an apology regarding the use of the hat on Gettysburg grounds, and admitting he made a mistake. He claims he wore the hat for educational purposes since we were in Gettysburg, and tried to excuse his use of the confederate flag instead of owning up to his mistake in order to move on from it . First he said he bought the hat in a local gift shop and later changed his story to tell me he had borrowed it from a friend. Just think of it this way, would you visit a Holocaust museum wearing a hat with a swastika, simply because it served an educational purpose? Articles have shown that even for educational re-enactments the flag has been banned in most places. Jason Martz, the National Park Services Spokesman for Gettysburg said the flag is hardly displayed unless it it directly related to a historical event. In 2015 after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black Churchgoers in South Carolina, many of the nations retailers stopped selling the flag. It is sad to see he won’t own up to a mistake he made in the past. I am more than willing to delete the video, but what would be the point now?”
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