The cries of a hungry newborn baby broke the silence of the sleepy house. Bleary-eyed and still groggy from sleep, English teacher Matt Clarke stumbled through the early morning darkness and made a bottle for the crying child. He reached for his phone to check the time, but his face was instead illuminated by a stream of Twitter notifications that seemed never-ending.
Clarke and his wife started fostering and adopting children seven years ago. In those years, they have cared for 12 children of varying age, race and background. On Sunday, March 20, Clarke posted a picture of his most recent foster daughter’s hairstyle with the caption, “Just did my first set of twists. Not bad for a white dad, right? Had some guidance. Building my skill diversity.” Within 48 hours, Clarke’s post had spiked to 22,600 likes and 12,700 retweets, with his follower count jumping from roughly 500 to 2,700.
“I didn’t expect it to [go viral],” Clark said. “I thought I was sharing it with the 500 people who follow me, and the 200 that actually ever pay attention to what I put on [Twitter]. I don’t understand why [it went viral], but my best guess is that it has to do with the fact that I am a white father, who posted a picture of a clearly African-American girl, whose hair I did in a very basic African-American style, and did a semi-decent job. I think that their reaction to that really just comes down to culture.”
Clarke said he simply posted the picture because he had surprised himself with how well he had done for his first try. He expected around 20 likes and nothing more, so he was surprised when he received notifications that he was the top Twitter trend in Dallas, Atlanta and Philadelphia, according to a Twitter trend tracker called Trendsmap.
“I don’t expect that this is going to be my big break and that I’m going to become famous and I won’t have to teach for a living,” Clarke said. “I don’t know, it’s just weird. I mean, I think about all of the good, solid and meaningful stuff out there that’s not going viral, and there’s so much negative stuff that is going viral. It’s insane.”
Overall, Clarke said the responses to his post were positive feedback and support, along with some criticism that he said will help him grow. He hopes to use his new Twitter popularity as a medium of positivity for all of his followers. Part of Clarke’s teaching philosophy is that people learn best when connected emotionally, intellectually and socially, and the purpose of his Twitter page has always been his way of attempting to do just that.
“I believe that hatred is never external; hatred is internal,” Clarke said. “So for people to post hateful things – racist things – about my kids, I don’t take that personally, because I feel like that’s a personal issue that they have, and the way that they’re working it out is by using it offensively. For everyone that has made a stupid comment, there are probably 20 to 30 people that have said something positive and encouraging, or defended my action of doing my African-American foster daughter’s hair. They defended me. That just kind of validates my belief that 95 percent of the world is good, and then the other 5 percent just kind of screws it up.”
Clarke and his wife began fostering the little girl from the post during Spring Break, and she was recently able to go back to her home and be with her family. According to Clarke, the hardest part of foster care is the heartbreak and grief of letting the children go back home again, after building such a strong relationship with them; however, he said there is still much joy in raising foster children.