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It was easy for black men to support her because she was "unapologetically black" in mainstream sports. Her and Michael Smith (who ultimately sacrificed his career to support her) were the great tag team... i fell for it

I'd say sacrificing his career is a stretch. Mans got paid basically to chill out for a year and now is back with his own new show and gig and he's still very much in demand. It may have fucked up espn for him but not his entire career. And Jemele has expressed guilt for what it did to him at espn multiple times since she left.

I think Jemele has gotten too caught up in the social media world of being overly performative and not being aware of how that can cause blowback. It kinda pidgeon holed her in a way that now people read anything she says as a comment on everything Black related. She did it to herself...
 
I'd say sacrificing his career is a stretch. Mans got paid basically to chill out for a year and now is back with his own new show and gig and he's still very much in demand. It may have fucked up espn for him but not his entire career. And Jemele has expressed guilt for what it did to him at espn multiple times since she left.

I think Jemele has gotten too caught up in the social media world of being overly performative and not being aware of how that can cause blowback. It kinda pidgeon holed her in a way that now people read anything she says as a comment on everything Black related. She did it to herself...

lol I guess, but the chick basically got up one morning and decided to just make a "Black men ain't shit" post.

Have you ever had a random urge to bad mouth black women on your social media?
 
By going along with her bullshit.


Well, even if he agreed with her..........as a man.........he should've seen the handwriting on the wall and told her they need to chill if they want to stay on the air.


Some people might call that selling out, but it would be more like protecting their platform.


Neither of their careers has been the same since they "left" ESPN.


Having said all that, they might not be totally to blame.


For a while, their show His & Hers was more popular than First Take.


Problem with that was they were only on for an hour..........but First Take was on for over 2 hours.


Longer show...........more advertising revenue.


People stop watching First Take........they lose money.


So they offered Jemele and Mike a quote/unquote "promotion" to do the 6pm Sportscenter.


Which, on the surface, seemed like a smart move........because, from what I heard, it was a huge salary bump.


So it's understandable why they would see it as a promotion, but it was really a move to prevent them from taking ratings and advertising dollars away from First Take.


I knew it wouldn't work out because the type of things they did at noon on their own show wouldn't fly at 6pm because those are two different audiences.


Eventually, ESPN management shut them down by forcing them to just do interviews with sideline reporters at game sites as pregame coverage for upcoming sporting events.


In all fairness, even though I know Jemele was the root cause of this...........Michael Smith has to take responsibility too for choosing to go along with her.


I know people like @IP360 say that they were on the same page, but the fact that you don't hear him saying anything along the lines of what she's saying now is proof enough that he has more sense than her.


Too bad he didn't use it when he had the chance.

He has been saying the same stuff and openly stood by her when the shit hit the fan at espn. The reason he stopped doing sports center is because he refused to do it without her so it wouldn't look like he was selling her out. Hes spoken on this. He was on bomani Jones podcast just last month promoting his new show and they were talking about more race related stuff than him and Jemele ever touched on in just that 1 hr episode.

When they left Sportscenter Jemele left espn entirely shortly after and outside of a couple appearances on Bomani and Pablo Torre's show Michael Smith just got paid to chill at home. He stopped being as active on social media but it was cuz of espn. Man said he simply took time he didnt have the past decade to be with his wife and kids more.

I know it's easy to paint Jemele as the big bad in this situation but if you listen to Michael smith talk about what led to their Sportscenter failing he said they had a bad feeling it wouldn't work from before the show even aired due to behind the scenes restraints they were given due to their show no longer being His and Hers and now being Sportscenter
 
lol I guess, but the chick basically got up one morning and decided to just make a "Black men ain't shit" post.

Have you ever had a random urge to bad mouth black women on your social media?

Nope but social media has also shown me that plenty of niggas do this on a daily. It's a pointless back and forth between black men and women. No one side is more to blame. Both are at fault. Though I will say the ease and frequency that some Black men have with threatening rape and violence towards Black women is sad as fuck.
 
Nope but social media has also shown me that plenty of niggas do this on a daily. It's a pointless back and forth between black men and women. No one side is more to blame. Both are at fault. Though I will say the ease and frequency that some Black men have with threatening rape and violence towards Black women is sad as fuck.

Can't say I've ever seen that, but then again I'm not on social media. I really only see tweets from famous people that go viral.
 
Nope but social media has also shown me that plenty of niggas do this on a daily. It's a pointless back and forth between black men and women. No one side is more to blame. Both are at fault. Though I will say the ease and frequency that some Black men have with threatening rape and violence towards Black women is sad as fuck.
Dudes really threaten rape online?

Shits disgusting.
 
It is but niggas response is often "Just log off". I made a thread about it on the IC once with people reading rape and death threats to women and some niggas legit response was "It ain't that serious"

That sounds harsh, but I'm not really sure what the response on a forum should be. Most of the time, it ain't that serious. I'm not even saying that to callous. I mean that a lot of people just talk shit online, so 99% of those threats are empty. How many times have we seen niggas on the IC or here talk like they were going to fight, and it go nowhere?

I don't think women should take anything too lightly though because that 1% is out there, but aside from reporting the bad actors to facebook, twitter, youtube, etc... I'm not sure what else they can do. Social media emboldens a lot of people to be assholes.
 
That sounds harsh, but I'm not really sure what the response on a forum should be. Most of the time, it ain't that serious. I'm not even saying that to callous. I mean that a lot of people just talk shit online, so 99% of those threats are empty. How many times have we seen niggas on the IC or here talk like they were going to fight, and it go nowhere?

I don't think women should take anything too lightly though because that 1% is out there, but aside from reporting the bad actors to facebook, twitter, youtube, etc... I'm not sure what else they can do. Social media emboldens a lot of people to be assholes.

How about offering basic human empathy and saying it's fucked up. Or not putting the onus on the women on the receiving end of those threats and comments to log off and instead trying to create an environment where a dude's doesnt feel some comfortable that his go to response to a woman he disagrees with isnt to threaten to rape or otherwise physically harm her?

Regardless if those threats are empty or not you realize how wild it is to suggest that in order to avoid rape threats women should just not participate in social media and should log off instead? That places not 1 iota of culpability on the people actually making the threats.
 
How about offering basic human empathy and saying it's fucked up. Or not putting the onus on the women on the receiving end of those threats and comments to log off and instead trying to create an environment where a dude's doesnt feel some comfortable that his go to response to a woman he disagrees with isnt to threaten to rape or otherwise physically harm her?

Regardless if those threats are empty or not you realize how wild it is to suggest that in order to avoid rape threats women should just not participate in social media and should log off instead? That places not 1 iota of culpability on the people actually making the threats.

Wait, I'm lost. You said that you made a thread on the IC about harassment that happened on other platforms right? Meaning the conversation was likely held between a bunch of dudes and the victim was nowhere involved right? If that's true, I don't get your little rant. You can't offer basic human empathy when the person you're supposed to empathize with isn't there. And a conversation on the IC has no impact whatsoever on how safe someone feels to make crazy comments on a completely different platform. I'm sure there were comments like "Just log off" or "It ain't that serious" but it's unfair for you to act like those comments were made to the victim if it was a completely separate discussion.

Now if I got it wrong, and you're talking about a conversation you had on the IC about bad behavior that actually happened on the IC, then I get what you're saying and I agree with you.
 
Wait, I'm lost. You said that you made a thread on the IC about harassment that happened on other platforms right? Meaning the conversation was likely held between a bunch of dudes and the victim was nowhere involved right? If that's true, I don't get your little rant. You can't offer basic human empathy when the person you're supposed to empathize with isn't there. And a conversation on the IC has no impact whatsoever on how safe someone feels to make crazy comments on a completely different platform. I'm sure there were comments like "Just log off" or "It ain't that serious" but it's unfair for you to act like those comments were made to the victim if it was a completely separate discussion.

Now if I got it wrong, and you're talking about a conversation you had on the IC about bad behavior that actually happened on the IC, then I get what you're saying and I agree with you.

Both actually would be true. As has happened on here when people bring up how far comments can go there was always those whose instant response was to log off or just ignore them as opposed to telling the people making the comments to stop.

And yes there was a specific thread made on the IC where women sat and had guys read some of the rape and death threats they received and there were some.who instead of simply saying it's wrong instead went the "why are they trying to manipulate my emotions? Just log off" route as well. And yes you can offer basic human empathy without the person being there. If you hear about someone whose been harmed or suffered a tragedy do they need to physically be in front of you in order to say "Damn that's fucked up..hope they're ok."? If not then you can do it people just choose not to for whatever reason that may be.
 
Both actually would be true. As has happened on here when people bring up how far comments can go there was always those whose instant response was to log off or just ignore them as opposed to telling the people making the comments to stop.

And yes there was a specific thread made on the IC where women sat and had guys read some of the rape and death threats they received and there were some.who instead of simply saying it's wrong instead went the "why are they trying to manipulate my emotions? Just log off" route as well. And yes you can offer basic human empathy without the person being there. If you hear about someone whose been harmed or suffered a tragedy do they need to physically be in front of you in order to say "Damn that's fucked up..hope they're ok."? If not then you can do it people just choose not to for whatever reason that may be.

Ok I get what you're saying. Yeah, that's pretty fucked up if chicks were literally reading off threats they received and dudes were callous like that.

As for the empathy part, what you're talking about is an empty gesture. Sure, a person could give the expression you suggested, and that's perfectly fine. However, if it's a conversation between parties who are all isolated from the event in question, doing that isn't any more right than making a suggestion about how the problem can be solved. Like when we see a thread with a video of someone falling or getting hit or something. You could argue that people should hope for that person to be ok too, and some do, but no one is demonized for not doing that because we all understand that those hopes and well wishes will go unnoticed.
 


One thing that I've noticed about activists or people taking up causes nowadays is that they don't seem to understand that sometimes the people that kick doors down aren't the ones that get to walk through them. You get that sense from Kaepernick and from Smith here. He said he was mad that people get to speak freely about that stuff now, but it hurt his career when he did it earlier. That's kinda how it goes though. Being a frontrunner in calls for social change more often than not requires the willingness to sacrifice.
 
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