Jason Whitlock’s Willful
Embodiment of Bigoted Sports Comment Section Rhetoric is Akin to Modern Day Uncle-Toming
During the 2016 presidential election comedian John Stewart
explained Donald Trump winning the Republican primary in the following manner,
“He [Donald Trump] makes sense if you view it through the
prism of talk radio and it [conservative talk radio] is 24-7 of ‘your country
is being taken away from you…’ It is ‘you’re being run by a tyrant, he’s going
to take away your rights, we are falling, and there are rapists and murderers at
the border coming to kill you.’ If that’s what you’ve been fed and that’s what
you’re buying into then Donald Trump makes more sense than anyone else out there.”
Jason Whitlock’s resurgent reemergence in the sports
headlines makes sense in the same vain
that the Donald Trump presidency makes sense.
Sports Comment
Section Rhetoric
In my opinion, the comment sections of sports-related websites
are remarkably similar to conservative talk radio in that these comment
sections are a platform for unashamed bigotry.
I don’t have the bandwidth to detail the intense levels of
bigotry espoused by those commenting in sports sections whenever a minority
athlete is the subject. If you are predisposed to type of torture, google Colin
Kaepernick or LeBron James or Richard Sherman or any other sports related content
that features a minority athlete. Read the comment section and survey the
amount of coded and outright bigoted comments.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Plus have successful
partnerships with sports sites to authenticate commenters in order to stem a
lot of this bigotry by attempting to deny these bigots anonymity.
Unfortunately, the level of bigotry remains so intense that the majority of
sports websites hire moderators whose sole purpose is to scrub their site of
bigoted comments. Furthermore, this intense bigotry has caused many sports sites
to discontinue the ability to allow their readers to comment on their content.
Not surprising, the tone and tenor of these comments, if not
flat out racist, are much more critical of minority athletes than white
athletes (google Kevin Love, Gordon Heyward, Ryan Anderson, Kyle Korver, JJ
Reddick, or Kelly Olynyk and survey the adjectives used by sports section
commenters to described these guys in comparison to our earlier google search).
Racism
Jason Whitlock discusses race on a regular basis. During the
past ten years, nearly every time Whitlock has discussed race I’ve found his
perspective to be somewhere between being off-base to being completely
illogical.
His take on race when LeBron James had “nigger” spray
painted on his Los Angeles home landed on the illogical end of the spectrum.
Whitlock said, “Racism is an issue in America, but it’s primarily an issue for
the poor. It’s not LeBron James’ issue.”
Let’s ignore the tacit admission of self-hatred by
associating a subject he acknowledges as a major problem (racism) with poverty.
I’m more focused on his suggestion that you can transcend racism.
The thing about racism, is that it is a belief system! It is
a belief system that members of a race possess innate characteristics that
distinguishes one as either inferior or superior to another race.
The things we witnessed in the past (slavery, lynchings, Jim
Crow) and the things we witness today (epithets, vandalism, murder at the hands
of police) are symptoms of racism. These atrocities happen because people carry
a racist belief system.
Despite the many attempts of Uncle Toms preceding Whitlock, a
person’s belief that one is innately inferior or that one is innately superior is
beyond the sphere of transcendence afforded by wealth or social status.
The troubling thing is Jason Whitlock knows better.
Jason Whitlock
Whatever you think of Whitlock’s opinions, he cannot be denounced
as a poor journalist. He’s actually a pretty damn good journalist.
Whitlock has been a reporter or columnist for several
renowned newspapers, has been published in the New York Times, and is the only sports
journalist awarded the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Commentary.
Whitlock is keenly adept at identifying provocative topics.
That’s a great ability to have in the commentary business.
The problem is, Whitlock is often tactless and makes poor
career choices.
Whitlock left the ESPN platform to work for AOL Sports and made
a racist and stereotypic sexual comment about Asian-American basketball player
Jeremy Lin. Upon returning to ESPN, he severely mismanaged its African American
focused affinity site, TheUndefeated.com, so poorly that he was fired before
the site officially launched.
Combined, his tactlessness and poor career choices resulted
in a spiraling career where his platforms were not aligned with his
journalistic talent. After being fired from ESPN and TheUndefeated.com,
Whitlock employed his keen journalistic instincts to reintroduce himself as the
Donald Trump of sports commentary.
I believe Whitlock recognized that the bigoted rhetoric used
by Donald Trump was eerily similar to the toxic rhetoric espoused in sports
comment sections. Whitlock’s firing from ESPN occurred the same month Donald
Trump launched his presidential campaign.
Whitlock understood that there is a distinct conservative
resentment of ESPN as many conservatives view ESPN as being ultra-liberal.
Whitlock realized that he was uniquely qualified to be the perfect messenger for
conservative sports bigotry. See, if Curt Schilling says something provocative,
he gets fired but, as an African American, Whitlock is bulletproof when giving
his opinions on race.
Whitlock reinvented himself as the Black man who will say
the things sports comment section bigots think and want to hear. Furthermore,
Whitlock, a Fox Sports 1 employee, will champion the conservative cause against
the liberal monster that is ESPN.
While I fully acknowledge Whitlock has been giving provocative
race related commentary for many years, his previous work, while disagreeable,
was often nuanced and thoughtful. His new shtick is sheer trolling.
For instance, when laying out his inspiration for
TheUndefeated.com in 2013, Whitlock claimed that intersection of race and
sports was under-reported and the Undefeated.com would delve deeply into race and
sports. However, in 2017 Whitlock says that race is not an issue for LeBron
James (and millionaire athletes by proxy). How, in 2013, could Whitlock claim that the
intersection of race and sports to be under-reported and part of the
inspiration of his site but in 2017 claim that race is not under the purview of
millionaire athletes? These are questions only opportunistic hypocrites can
answer.
Since his firing at ESPN Whitlock fired off several tone-deaf
attacks on LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and other black athletes and
celebrities in an effort to regain his lost stature. Whitlock’s plan is
working. His recent commentary, a more pronounced a gumbo of Sambo Black
privilege, bigoted coded-language, and white apologist rhetoric, has him
entrenched in the headlines in 2017.
Michael Eric Dyson referred to Jason Whitlock as, “a
ventriloquist for white supremacy.” I hope that Whitlock willful embrace of
coonery is not as beneficial for him as bigotry has been for Donald Trump.
Either way, I feel bad for Whitlock. I feel
worse for the people that raised him.
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