Fox Sports host Shannon Sharpe has never been shy about voicing his opinion on his namesake show “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed.” Now the former football player is using his platform to rail against the ridiculous notion that a few successful Black people can make-up for centuries of racism and oppression in America.
Referencing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote “It’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps,” Sharpe summarized the faulty ideology held by many white Americans.
“As Dr. King said, we ask a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps. When the slaves were freed Dr. King said, freed to what … what did we get,” Sharpe passionately asked. “They’ve had a 400-year head start and they expect us to catch up because what they do Skip [is say] ‘Well you got Michael Jordan. You had a Black president for eight years. Huh? Only us, we’re allowed to get one or two, three successful and that’s supposed to make up for the 45 million of us.”
He added that Black citizens overall should be given a fair chance to build generational wealth.
“Well that’s enough. I mean You got a Black president, you got Oprah, you got Michael Jordan, got LeBron, I mean what else you need,’” Sharpe continued, echoing some of the statements he’s heard over the years. “Really? We need an opportunity to acquire wealth and have generational wealth like the gap that’s been provided to them before we even got started in the race.”
Sharpe also encouraged Black Americans to “fight back at the ballot box” and “fight with our minds.”
“I think sometimes … far too many times [people think], ‘Well my vote doesn’t count.’ Well every vote counts and that’s what happened last time. That’s how we got this guy in the White House,” Sharpe said. “[People said] ‘Well, I’m not gonna vote because it doesn’t matter anyway and lo and behold you saw what happened.”
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Part 2. J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, may not be around but his energy is present in new Black politics.
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees also drew Sharpe’s ire this week after saying he would “never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America” in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s murder by a police officer who took an almost nine-minute knee on Floyd’s neck.
“He issued an apology, Skip [Bayless], but it’s meaningless because the guys know he spoke his heart the very first time around. I don’t know what Drew’s going to do, but he probably should just go ahead and retire now. He will never be the same,” Sharpe said. “It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it. He was defiant. I will NEVER respect the man.”
Clearly, Sharpe has a sharp rebuke for racist and culturally ignorant folk.
