Progressive media and social justice warrior athletes are heaping praise on Utah Jazz veteran Kyle Korver for confessing to white privilege in this week's post on The Players Tribune, titled "Privileged." He is now the toast of ESPN talk shows, its blog The Undefeated, and athletes for writing that present-day white Americans are responsible for the racist sins of their forefathers.
FS1 talk show host Jason Whitlock and Outkick The Coverage blogger and radio show host Clay Travis strongly refuted Korver's white guilt "manifesto."
The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears wrote: "Black NBA players, including (LeBron) James, (Dwyane) Wade, (Chris) Paul, (Thabo) Sefolosha, Draymond Green, Shaun Livingston, Donovan Mitchell and many others, said thank you to Korver on social media after his revealing essay. It’s because those African American men know that white words truly matter in their dream of stopping racism and social injustice." Spears continued:
"But in light of recent racist events at Jazz home games, Korver could not stay silent. The 38-year-old sharpshooter took a stand alongside African Americans and other people of color in the quest to end racism, social injustice and police brutality, and to offer better education and job opportunities."
ESPN First Take's co-hosts Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman came out strongly in their support of Korver, too. Kellerman had this to say:
" ... Good for you, white players. But again, when you think about who caused the situation, whose responsibility is it? The fact that it's so often put on African-American individuals to take the responsibility and not often put on the people who enjoy the privilege. I mean, because once upon a time, it was not black people who were responsible for the international slave trade or slavery or reconstruction or Jim Crow or disenfranchising voters or all that stuff. Right? ..."
ESPN's NBA program, The Jump, featured yet more support for the white NBA player admitting to his so-called white guilt.
Former NBA player Byron Scott remarked that "I thought what he said was riveting and I thought it was mind-blowing at times, and I also thought it was very educational because now you have one of your own, and I'm talking about the Caucasian people in society, you have one of your own standing up and telling you that."
The Jump's progressive host Rachel Nichols (in photo above) jabbered on about white privilege, too:
"If you are someone who's been given all the automatic advantages at birth that you get from being white in this country and at this time. You have to understand how far that puts you ahead of other people before anyone does anything, anything that you earned or didn't earn, that you were starting from so far ahead, and having Kyle come out and say that, as you say, someone that maybe, as he put it in the piece, he goes when I look around an NBA game I look more like a lot of the fans than I do like the players. And I want you to know that I see this. And I think that's why you see the Tweets."
Travis accused Korver of using a ghost-writer for his post on The Players Tribune about how racist America is. "And I'll be damned if it isn't the lead story on ESPN." He complained that Korver's piece is treated as "news" when it's just "one dude's opinion but the media agrees with him. ... This is one of the most ridiculous things I see over and over again." Here's a few of Travis's tweets:
As for Whtilock, his criticism of Korver was an absolute evisceration of virtue-signaling and racial demagoguery (click "expand"):
"I'd like to congratulate Utah Jazz guard Kyle Korver for his entry into 'Woke Heaven.' Korver walked through the Pearly Gates yesterday shortly after The Players Tribune published his white manifesto that neatly touched every Silicon Valley-inspired talking point known to man. Twitter lost its mind, hailing Korver's well-orchestrated word salad as the white man's letter from a Birmingham jail."
(....)
"'Woke Heaven' only exists on social media, the matrix built by the tech companies to dumb the masses to the point that we think delusional group-think spewed by millionaire celebrities and athletes is courageous, original thought. There were no original thoughts in Korver's piece. It was a collage of everyday Twitter talking points that some people found powerful because they appeared under the byline of a white millionaire basketball player. Some people believe the white man's ice is colder. I don't.
"Korver's piece was, at best, a surface level buzzword critique of the American criminal justice system. At worst, it was a condescending misguided bigotry that argued white men such as Korver must take on the burden of feeling very, very sorry for black people and a responsibility of uplifting us from dire circumstances. White Jesus nailed himself to a cross, employed his white disciples to do the same, and predictably the black Twitter 'congregation' called the Holy Ghost and began speaking in tongues. We're suckers for white saviors. Korver's manifesto was a Green Book meets the White Shadow, an Oscar winner and a TV classic rolled into one Player's Tribune highlight take. Except no one is getting saved. Korver's Magnum Opus is just one more brick along the road paved to hell by good intentions, virtue-signaling and racial demagoguery."
