Jemele Hill said what she said.
In a series of tweets stemming from an odd conversation about Kid Rock , the co-host of ESPNs SC6 called President Donald Trump a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.
Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime, she wrote. His rise is the direct result of white supremacy. Period. She added that Trumps presidency had empowered other white supremacists and that his bid for the White House wouldnt have been successful if he werent white.
Backlash to the tweets, helped along by people like former ESPN reporter Britt McHenry and Fox Sports Radios Clay Travis who frequently says racist things led ESPN to release a statement saying Hills views do not represent the position of the network. This made things worse.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, called Hills tweets a fireable offense . That same day, ESPN tried to prevent Hill from co-hosting SC6 with Michael Smith. In a tweet, Hill said her regret was that her comments painted ESPN in an unfair light. ESPNs public editor, Jim Brady , said Hill and the media at large should let the reporting do its work, and resist more incendiary labels.
None of what Hill said in her initial volley of tweets was inaccurate. Trump voters were driven by racism , and white supremacists openly support him . His campaign rhetoric was a dog whistle for white supremacists . His attorney general has praised the Immigration Act of 1924 , a law crafted by eugenicists and championed by people hoping to preserve a distinct American type. After a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump attributed the violence to both sides , even though none of the counter-protesters killed anyone.
That Trump is a white supremacist is a straightforward conclusion that can be drawn from an abundance of available evidence.
But not all straightforward conclusions are admissible in mainstream American media, particularly on the subject of race, particularly when stated by a black woman.
To get a sense of the straitjackets placed on black media figures working in a predominantly white industry, where white supremacy is usually seen as a slur applicable only to Klansmen and Nazis, I convened three prominent black journalists: Greg Howard , a Metro reporter at The New York Times who previously wrote for The New York Times Magazine and for Deadspin; Elena Bergeron , former staff writer at ESPN The Magazine and current editor-in-chief of SB Nation; and a current ESPN employee who, for obvious reasons, wanted to remain anonymous.
The conversation took place over Slack, a group messaging service. With the participants agreement, a transcript of that discussion appears below. Its been edited for clarity and length.
Greg Howard: I guess Im mostly frustrated by how disingenuous the entire conversation around it is. None of the events around it are actually real.
ESPN Employee: Yes. Its not about name-calling.
Elena Bergeron: It really highlights for the public how easy it is to attack and pile on women and POC in the media. Theres a thing in all of this about the policing of her opinions and the level of authority other people (trolls, etc.) feel like they have over her voice and that those criticisms should be acted upon.
Greg: Its even more cynical than that for me? Clay Travis and Britt McHenry are viruses! Their only goal is self-promotion. Their goal is to increase their star power. We can talk about whether they really believed that Jemele should be fired.
But Clays endgame was to say boobs on national TV.
Julia: I keep looping back to how this wouldnt have happened to a white person. Hell, Miss Texas came at Trump over white supremacy and she was praised. Groundbreaking criticism. *rolls eyes*
ESPN Employee: Theres a really troubling double standard and I think media companies are struggling to recognize it and it shows. This administration targets black female critics in particular.
Julia: Could you expand on that?
ESPN Employee: So, CNN.com ran a conversation that Chris Cillizza had about this and tried to frame this as tit-for-tat schoolyard politics. I think thats completely misguided. So much of the way this situation has been discussed elides the role that race plays in this, which is weird. It elides that correctly identifying threats from racism and white supremacy are not optional for black people. It is part and parcel of our survival in this country because we cannot rely on protection from the state.
Julia: Greg, tell me more about Clay Travis.
Greg: Hes a troll. I dont really think he has any sophisticated political view or anything. Hes not a journalist or anything. His whole, entire game is self-promotion. Hes sexist and racist, and his best trait is that he recognizes there are others like him out there which is why he largely attacks black people and women in an effort to self-promote.
ESPN Employee: Greg are you talking about Clay Travis or the president?
Greg: Both, because no one whos invested in it would deny that Donald Trump is a white supremacist not people of color, not white supremacists, not regular-shmegular racists like Clay Travis and Britt McHenry .
ESPN Employee: Right. We saw that after Charlottesville. The white nationalists and neo-Nazis there believe Trump is on their side. All you have to do is look at Reddit and 4chan. The evidence is staring us in the face and we have to stop behaving as though what happens on the internet doesnt have real world implications.
Elena: Its a good reminder for me that: 1) women and POC who are in the media get a disproportionate amount of harassment and criticism from all sides; 2) when Jemele and anybody who has a front-facing job within a company get attacked, their options for responding publicly are really, really limited.
ESPN Employee: Yes, that is really scary. I mean, journalists are ostensibly front-facing employees, right?
Elena: As someone who has to manage writers and social staff that deals with trolling all the time, I think a lot about how to support them publicly without dulling their voice, or mitigating frustrations or (accurate) facts theyre bringing up.
The most important thing out of all of this is who stood up for Jemele.
ESPN Employee: Elena, can you say more about that? How did you develop a strategy for supporting your writers? What guided you?
Elena: Thats a thing that evolves every single day, to be honest. But were having a lot of conversations about it because you cannot hire people and have them lean into showcasing their personalities and then get mad/not stand by them when they showcase their personality!
ESPN Employee: I think Margaret Sullivan said something very similar in her column this week .
Elena: What Jemele expressed was based on her identity and her experience as a black woman in this country, and that perspective cant only be valuable when it makes everyone comfortable. Its got to be valuable when it makes some folks uncomfortable too.
Julia: Going off what Elena said earlier, let me ask yall about this push to get Jemele off the air. According to the ThinkProgress scoop , Michael Smith, Michael Eaves and Elle Duncan all said no to taking her SC6 spot.
Elena:
ESPN Employee: Thank God
What Jemele expressed was based on her identity and her experience as a black woman in this country, and that perspective cant only be valuable when it makes everyone comfortable.
- Elena Bergeron, editor-in-chief of SB Nation
Julia: Elena pointed out how all the black employees involved stepped up and protected her. So how do the black folks at your outlets protect one another? Im really interested in this idea of there being two newsrooms one where white folks are, well, there and one where black people and other POC are having all these behind-the-scenes convos about what goes down. At HuffPost, we have a black Slack and all the black people talk to each other about EVERYTHING.
Greg: We have a Slack for minorities, too, but its mostly buttoned up.
Julia: We created this Slack after an intense union email thread on diversity where a few of us rightfully felt like we werent being heard. So we wanted to pop shit about it in private. What goes down at yalls outlets?
Elena: There are a couple Vox media Slack rooms plus some employee resource groups all optional but there for people to talk candidly, share info, just generally support.
Greg: Honestly, our minority Slack can get lit at times. But theres definitely hesitation to speak candidly. I definitely dont, and I think I speak more than most.
ESPN Employee: I was surprised to see the number of people commenting on ESPNs internal message board, which I think got leaked to Deadspin .
Greg: God bless em.
ESPN Employee: Haha
Greg: Yeah that was wild to see, though. Peak white shit haha.
ESPN Employee: Yoooooo. Like, wow, OK, so NOBODY gets it. We have such a huge problem on our hands.
Greg: I mean, her own coworkers were calling for her head and trying to connect what she said about Trump to Curt Schilling and Linda Cohn in public! I was aghast.
ESPN Employee: Clearly there are folks in Bristol [Connecticut] who think calling white people racist is as bad as actually being racist, which ... they gotta fix that.
Greg: It was fascinating, because you saw that some of ESPNs own employees were the same sort of people trying to police Jemele on Twitter.
ESPN Employee: Do you think theres some job envy there? Like, I should have that SC seat, not her?
Greg: Envy might be part of it, but I think its more just that many people dont think a black woman should have that job. That underlined so much of the rage against Jemele, and that was there from the day she started. And so theres this idea that her placement there is probationary, and that viewers are allowing her to be there. And if she steps out of line by offending them, they can call for her head.
ESPN Employee: OK, Im glad you said that. I think it points to a bigger problem overall, which is that there are a lot of well-meaning white people who dont understand just how racist our society is and they dont have very good tools for it. Because the way we define racism is EXTREMELY limited.
Elena: Oooooh, church.
Greg: Tommy Craggs said it , but Jemeles sin wasnt offending the president or lying about the president or even telling the truth. It was being uppity and talking out of turn. Thats where the rage came from.
ESPN Employee: Yeah. They hate that. Hell, April Ryan didnt even have to open her mouth. She just shook her head .
Greg: The subtext to the whole thing was, Who said this black woman can mouth off?
Julia: Jemele said that herself in The Ringer piece . Also, she didnt lie. Her tweets are factually accurate.
Greg: Im still looking for her lie!
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