ESPN college football personality Paul Finebaum groveled his way through an embarrassing apology yesterday on SportsCenter in which he said he had “no right” to say that America does not oppress black people.
As reported by Mediaite, Finebaum initially drew fire for comments he made on his show Monday in the context of the controversy over 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick protesting our National Anthem because America “oppresses people of color.” During an interview with SEC Network analyst Marcus Spears, Finebaum had said that “This country has serious issues, but this country is not oppressing black people.” Spears, who is black, agreed.
Finebaum followed up the next day by criticizing Kaepernick again in a discussion on College Football Live:
I don’t understand where Colin is coming from in terms of this specific issue. He’s upset about the way minorities are being dealt with, in his words ‘oppressed,’ he’s talking about police brutality, sitting down during the national anthem, I don’t think he is the connector to those issues.
Apparently he took a tremendous amount of heat for stating the truth about Kaepernick’s Black Lives Matter race-baiting, possibly even from his bosses, because on Wednesday, Finebaum appeared on the show SportsCenter to recant his politically unacceptable opinion publicly:
I could spend the rest of my life trying to talk my way out of it, but I can’t. I blew it. I simply did not have a good grasp of the situation. I know better. I’ve lived in this country. I see what is going on all across the country from north to south, east to west. And I have no excuse. I can’t explain why I articulated the words the way they (sic) did. But I did. And there’s a public record of it. And there’s a natural reaction. And I respect that. And all I can say is I made a terrible mistake. In trying to express a feeling that I probably — not probably — I had no right to express.
Finebaum has “no right” to express his opinion and must apologize for it, but Kaepernick is hailed by some in the sports community as a courageous civil rights leader for expressing his opinion?
He was absolutely correct and he articulated the words just fine. This country does indeed have serious race issues, but the notion that people of color are being “oppressed” is demonstrably false. We have a black President and a black Attorney General. People of color occupy positions of power at every level in every arena of society. While racism certainly exists — among all races — there is no systemic, organizational “oppression” of non-whites.
Finebaum added, “My eyes are wider open today than they’ve ever been as a result.” Yes, because now he knows how hard the politically correct totalitarians will come down on those who dare to speak the truth about race in this country
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