Jemele Hill (1975- ), a Black American journalist, co-hosts the news show “SportsCenter” with Michael Smith on ESPN, a sports channel on US television.
On September 11th 2017, she said stuff like this on her personal Twitter account:
“Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
“Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.”
“He is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected.”
That led to calls for ESPN to fire her. @TrumpPence45, for example, said on Twitter:
“We demand ESPN to fire @jemelehill for libel against our President! You are the racist! Not him #CrazyLiberal #BoycottESPN”
ESPN distanced themselves from her outburst of truth:
“The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the President do not represent the position of ESPN. We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.”
Like L’Oreal, ESPN wants to hire Black bodies, but does not want them to call out racism.
The White House itself called her remarks “outrageous” and a “fireable offence.” Here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, spokesman for President Trump, commenting on Hill’s remarks:
“I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offence by ESPN.”
Hours later ESPN tried to pull her off the show. But Michael Smith, her co-host, refused to go on without her. When ESPN tried replace both Hill and Smith with Michael Eaves and Elle Duncan, they refused too. (Note that ESPN denies all this.)
In the end Hill apologized to ESPN, but not to Trump:
“My comments on Twitter expressed my personal beliefs. My regret is that my comments and the public way I made them painted ESPN in an unfair light. My respect for the company and my collegagues remains unconditional.”
Her comments remain unbowed on Twitter.
A huge cultural misunderstanding is at work here, to put it in the nicest way possible.
Donald Trump himself has called a sitting president racist:
“Obama’s ’07 speech which @DailyCaller just released not only shows that Obama is a racist but also how the press always covers for him.”
That was on October 3rd 2012, on his personal Twitter account. Trump too was on a television show at the time, “The Apprentice”. Yet there was no outrage by the right or by the White House, no calls by them that he be fired.
To understand all this, you need to know the Whitespeak defintion of “racist”:
racist – 1. Someone who uses the N-word or joins the Klan. 2. A Black person who points out White racism.
Obama and Hill fit #2. Trump fits neither one. After all, the definition does not count as racist:
- refusing to rent to Black people,
- demanding a Black president show his long-form birth certificate,
- banning Muslims,
- calling Mexicans rapists,
- being slow to condemn the Klan or neo-Nazis.
– Abagond, 2017.
Update (September 15th, 15.32 GMT): Trump is now demanding an apology for Hill’s “untruth”. This morning he tweeted:
“ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!”
Update (October 10th): ESPN has suspended Hill for two weeks. Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboy, threatened to bench players who took a knee to protest police brutality. Hill in turn urged people to boycott his advertisers. ESPN saw this as her second abuse of her personal Twitter account and therefore suspended her.
Sources: mainly Complex News, NewsOne Now, ThinkProgress.
See also:
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: The First White President – part of what informed Hill’s view of Trump
- The r-word
- also on ESPN: The Caucasians T-shirt
- L’Oreal
- Donald Trump
- Whitespeak
- Obama’s ’07 speech
525
minor anecdote: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of Mike Huckabee, another ex-governor of Arkansas!
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Update: Trump is now demanding an apology for Hill’s “untruth”. This morning he tweeted:
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“A huge cultural misunderstanding is at work here, to put it in the nicest way possible.”
Let’s call it what it is: White supremacists and their allies attempting to shut down critical analysis of their words and actions. They do this by projecting their own attitudes and actions onto Black people.
Designating Black people as “racists” is a convenient way to deflect and distract from the daily stream of putdowns and abuse of Black people by White and White adjacent folk.
Labeling Black people as “racist” is an utterly cynical ploy because the vast majority of Black people do not:
🔆 believe they are superior to other groups of people.
🔆 have the power to create, maintain and enforce systems of oppression over other groups.
Just because a Black person is angry, avoids other groups or makes biting comments doesn’t indicate “racism”. It could be prejudice, bias or bigotry. However, most Black people who exhibit those behaviors are reacting to a lifetime of negative experiences with members of other groups.
“Racist” has become a catchall word to describe everything from Black anger and truth telling to systems of oppression by people of the same phenotype.
For example, the Scots and Irish call the English “racists” even though they are all White. The Palestinians call the Israeli’s “racists” even though they are both Semitic peoples. In both cases there is an oppressed/oppressor relationship between the groups, that has nothing to do with race as it is commonly understood.
This gross overuse of the term, “racist” has depleted the word of it’s original meaning and it’s power. That suits real Übermensch racists just fine.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ubermensch
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Again some song second verse there is a large segment of white Americans who do like the truth especially 45 supporters. She told no lies about 45 he is a white supremacist. These people are the most ignorant and tone def hate filled obtuse imbeciles on the planet. Jemele Hill is built for the blowback that’s come her way she had to be in order to work in a male dominated field as a sports commentator. I stand with her like I stand with Kaepernick, these white tears shredders can’t handle the truth.
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And a million middle fingers to Sarah Huckabee- Sanders. She is a💩
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So when a black person says something 45 doesn’t like he’s like he wants to go after them and try to ruin their life. I guess 45 wants to do the Kathy Griffin treatment on Jemele. So I guess he wants to silence people who criticize him. He is a 71 year old toddler having a temper tantrum.
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@Afrofem: Tell the truth shame the devil.
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Same song^^^^typo
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One must not speak ill of the feuher.
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@ Mary Burrell
You are on quite a roll!
I think of him as the Toddler in Chief, too. Like he stopped growing emotionally at age four and merely aged in place. It is a sad spectacle.
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@ Deb
Good to see you on the radar screen again.
How are you and your family handling the wild weather in Texas and the Carolinas?
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You misspelled her name.
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@ Rhaegar Targaryen
Ugh! Thanks.
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@ Afrofem
So what happens when a word loses its impact? Does it disappear into the lexicon of forgotten terms, never to be spoken again? Or does it take on a new form when new meaning is attached to it?
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@ Mack Lyons
Every word, like every person has its own path.
As far as I am concerned, the term “racist” has been appropriated by bigots and portions of the global oppressed for their own purposes.
It still has a bit of sting. Some people feel that it lends their cause moral authority.
That is especially true of people who feel their group is “superior” to other groups——-people who fit the original definition of “racists”. They tend to use the word preemptively against the people they oppress.
To me, the terms “racist” and “racism” will remain part of the lexicon. Only now those terms have been weaponized against the oppressed by oppressors and their allies.
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Update (October 10th): ESPN has suspended Hill for two weeks. Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboy, threatened to bench players who took a knee to protest police brutality. Hill in turn urged people to boycott his advertisers. ESPN saw this as her second abuse of her personal Twitter account and therefore suspended her.
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@ Abagond
” ESPN saw this as her second abuse of her personal Twitter account…”
I wonder where First Amendment freedom of speech rights fit in this situation?
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@ Afrofem
Strictly speaking, the First Amendment concerns only government censorship.
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@Abagond
“Strictly speaking, the First Amendment concerns only government censorship.”
Which makes it creepy that the administration weighed in and called Hill’s expression of her opinion a “firable offence”. Having government threaten your livelihood by leaning on your employer to fire you for what you said is tantamount to censorship.
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Many foul things were said about the Obama and his family and nobody’s livelihood was threatened. They are coming for black people to silence and shut them down.
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I hope Jamele’s peers support her and I hope many black Americans who are sports fans boycott ESPN.
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And boycott all the sponsors of The Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Jones must keep his million dollar negros in check because he is the massa.
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@ Mary Burrell
“Jerry Jones must keep his million dollar negros in check because he is the massa.”
I’m sure living in Dallas, you get sick of hearing his bloviating. “Massa” indeed, LOL!
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Because she is a black woman also plays huge in this as well. The double standards Imagine a world where Jemele Hill gets the same praise for saying 45’s a racist that Eminem does.
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White male rapper can rail against 45 and no repercussions but a black woman like Jemele Hill gets punished and threatened to be silent.
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@miss mary b good point
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