Rachel in undeserved racism flap when private conversation leaks
Rachel Nichols is one of the most respected of NBA reporters. She has a rare ability to gain the trust of professional basketball players. They relax and reveal their true selves to her. They laugh and they joke. She’s especially sensitive to African-American culture and the historic disadvantages of being Black.
But now she finds herself being accused of self-serving racism. The New York Times last week wrote of a live-mic incident a year ago in which Nichols expressed indignation about ESPN’s decision to give her hosting duties at the 2020 NBA Finals to a Black woman, Maria Taylor.
Nichols’ conversation with a friend, Adam Mendelsohn, in her hotel room in the Disney bubble was inadvertently captured on video camera and was transmitted to ESPN’s home office in Bristol. There it was duplicated by a digital video producer, Kayla Johnson, who sent a copy to Taylor.
The smoking-gun quote: “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity, go for it. . . . Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it . . . taking my thing away.”
Johnson, who is Black, informed ESPN’s human resources department of her leak. She was promptly suspended two weeks without pay. Following that, her profile declined, and soon she left the Disney-owned company.
Credit ESPN for being relatively transparent about such a sensitive story. Management didn’t just issue a string of no-comments. Nichols was seen weeping after learning that Malika Andrews, who is Black, was replacing her on NBA Countdown. However, Nichols was permitted to maintain her role as lead commentator on The Jump, which is the most credible and comprehensive of NBA-focused talk shows.
The National Association of Black Journalists heard Nichols’ comments as being “disparaging given the ongoing reports by Black journalists of white men advancing at ESPN because of their skin tone and not by merit.”
I find it ridiculous that white people in America feel their race is the one that suffers most from discrimination. No doubt a media company sometimes pays big for a person of color who has the potential of galvanizing a specific community. But when I worked for daily newspapers in Houston, Atlanta and Orlando, the newsroom staffs were more than 90% white. To me that suggests systemic racism, without diving far into Critical Race Theory, which is probably beyond my grasp.
I worked among a smattering of Latin Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans and found every one of them to be capable. I never heard of anyone from a minority race being the least competent person in his or her department. That person was always, without exception, a white male.
I knew many a mediocre white boy who attended the same college as the editor. Some were in the same fraternity. The GPA didn’t matter. The rest of the resume didn’t matter.
I frequently hear white men say they lost out on an opportunity because a Black person received preferential treatment. My response: “Do you really believe you’d have a better chance of success if you were Black?”
It’s unfortunate that Rachel Nichols on this one occasion drifted into the camp of the ignorant bigots. I don’t think she fits.
She is ashamed of herself for feeling so aggrieved. It’s unfair to call her insensitive, when she thought her comments were not leaving the room. She expressed no criticism of Maria Taylor. Yet she did make a point of criticizing her company for being too slow to embrace racial diversity. That is not a concern of most white Americans I know. Perhaps the shot she took at ESPN upset the network bosses more than her complaint regarding Taylor.
Let’s not make more of this than what it is. Rachel Nichols objected to losing her job to someone else. It would not have mattered to her what color of skin someone else had.
