Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Jason Whitlock is a disgusting human being and a disgrace to the Black race.
He adds absolutely nothing to the culture or the community, and every time you see his name in headlines or trending on social media, it’s because he’s yet again done something coonish or buffoonish.
He is an attention-seeker, a click-baiter and the kind of dude you would love to see get his ass kicked publicly as many times as possible because he deserves it.
Wednesday night, that ass-kicking showed up in a video rant, and the person kicking his ass was none other than Stephen A. Smith.
In case you missed it, the ESPN commentator and “First Take” host spent nearly 40 minutes on his YouTube podcast, “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” flame-broiling Whilock — who he referred to as “a fat bastard that has gotten away for far too long talking his bullshit.”
“You wanted some? Fine. I’m happy to give it to you, you piece of shit,” Smith said in the opening of his show.
Smith was responding to a column Whitlock published on a right-wing website last week in which he accused Smith of being an industry plant that Disney and ESPN installed “at the top of sports media because his inadequacies as a journalist make him easy to control.”
Whitlock also alleged that Smith did not write his own 2023 memoir, “Straight Shooter” and directly accused Smith of making up some of the stories in his book, including one about how he got a basketball scholarship to Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.
I’m not going to give a play-by-play of what Smith said because in those 40 minutes, he said so much, and it was all delicious, so I highly recommend you check it out for yourself because it is well-worth the watch.
If you know me, you know that I am not a huge fan of Stephen A. Smith. I think he is an obnoxious loudmouth, and I called him out in 2022 for defending Jerry Jones when the photo of Jones watching Black students being blocked from integrating his Arkansas high school surfaced.
Smith’s Whitlock rant gave me a new level of respect for him. He fried that man, and it was well-deserved because as Smith said, Whitlock has gotten away with his particular brand of chicanery for far too long.
Whitlock is currently a right-wing media darling who makes money being anti-Black and saying things about Black people that white people wish they could say without getting the brakes beat off of them. But he was anti-Blackness long before he donned his red vest and fez and bashed his cymbals together for the white right-wing checks.
He is and has been the poster child of self-loathing, internalized anti-Blackness and racism. He is Candace Owens-levels of cringe, and the lengths he will go to in order to receive a pat on the head and a check from racist white people know no bounds.
As my friend and colleague Michael Harriot once wrote about him, “his function in life is to serve as a funnel through which anti-Black white scorn disguised as ‘commentary’ can freely flow.”
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“If Candace Owens had a baby with Boyce Watkins and gave it up for adoption to Skip Bayless, Whitlock would eat that baby before it reached toddlerhood just to make sure it didn’t take his spot on the Caucasian cheerleading team,” Harriot wrote.
As Smith said in his rant and others have pointed out on Twitter, Whitlock has no friends in Black media. I don’t know any other Black journalists who take him seriously or consider him their “peer.”
Like Owens, Whitlock has figured out the formula to riches and keeping a check from racist white people in his pocket is finding different ways to denigrate Black people, and he has spent the better part of the last few years doing just that.
He has attacked Serena Williams, a beloved sports icon in the Black community, by questioning her GOAT status as compared to white women in the sport of tennis, and he also had the unmitigated gall to call her fat.
Imagine being the fat slovenly joke that Jason Whitlock is and calling Serena Williams, who has an athletic body that is desirable and thicker than day-old grits, fat. The nerve.
He’s hated on LeBron James, as previously highlighted by Michael Harriot.
As Toure wrote here at theGrio last year:
Whitlock gets paid to repeat the right wing’s dogma whether or not it’s true. It’s a solid gig. It’s dangerous to Black people and helpful to white supremacy to have a Black villain like Jason Whitlock running around blaming Black people for everything and denying racism whenever he can but, as I said, it’s a solid gig. He’s not going to get fired — he’s there because they want him to say things that would get other people canceled.
Whitlock is fully aware of what he’s doing, and he knows white people are going to eat it up, so he keeps going because that’s what tap-dancing monkeys of the porch variety are paid to do — perform for the white gaze and make white people feel OK about their anti-Black racism.
Even on Thursday morning, as everyone around the internet was discussing Smith’s rant, Whitlock took the opportunity to use this moment to promote his foolishness as a means of trying to one-up Smith.
I’m not going to link to him because that man will get no clicks from me, but a quick cruise down his Twitter timeline shows he’s aware that Smith came for him; he made his previously pay-walled article about Smith free for viewing just to get more eyes on it.
It’s not just that he is anti-Black; he’s dangerous to Black people because he spouts and repeats right-wing rhetoric, talking points and misinformation that is harmful to the Black community.
Never forget that he blamed Tyre Nichols’ death at the hands of police on single Black mothers.
Even in his column that mentions Smith, the column Smith was responding to, Whitlock highlights what he calls “15 lies you must support or ignore in order to avoid character assassination in America,” and among those supposed “15 lies” are things like the Jan. 6 insurrection, the COVID vaccine, systemic racism in America and that George Floyd’s death was a result of systemic racism in policing (he alleges it was years of drug abuse and Floyd resisting arrest).
It’s the kinds of things you would expect to hear from Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson but not a Black man with Black parents who understands what Blackness is.
And trust me; Jason Whitlock understands what Blackness is because he also understands that in America, Blackness is not profitable unless it is being commodified by white people.
And because Jason Whitlock understands this, he has leaned fully into anti-Blackness which is much more profitable — especially when there is an actual Black face behind the anti-Blackness.
Jason Whitlock is what happens when you are an unlikable, self-hating individual who has no real friends and no one who cares enough about you to sit you down and tell you that what you are doing is wrong.
He’s so far gone and lost in the sauce that there is no bringing him back, and at this point, do we really want to?
Imagine selling your soul and selling out your people for a check to the very people who will sell your Black-ass out the first chance they get.
It’s egregious and disappointing, but not surprising.
Jason Whitlock is an anti-Black menace who deserves nothing good in life.
Stephen A. Smith simply gave voice to what the rest of us in Black media and the Black community in general were already thinking.
Monique Judge is a storyteller, content creator and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a word nerd who is a fan of the Oxford comma, spends way too much time on Twitter, and has more graphic t-shirts than you. Follow her on Twitter @thejournalista or check her out at moniquejudge.com.
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