While appearing on a show hosted by someone famous for once wearing tampons as earrings, ESPN’s Jemele Hill discussed the endorsement struggles of black tennis star Serena Williams with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry.
Harris-Perry noted that white tennis star Maria Sharapova makes more in endorsement money than Serena, even though Sharapova is not as good as Serena.
Jemele Hill then responded in a way that no one could have ever expected:
Harris-Perry asked, “To the Serena point, she makes less in endorsements than some folks who are ranked far below her who are more sort of classically presumed.”
Hill responded, “But that’s a different consumer audience. That doesn’t justify it but, in fact, it just highlights the racism and classism in it because if you look at Maria Sharapova’s endorsements, Bentley, all these high end products, Serena can’t do that.”
Okay, maybe you could see that response coming. Actually, Jemele Hill started giving a marketing reason for the difference in advertisers for the two tennis stars. But then quickly backed off that crazy talk and dished out the racial red meat that Harris-Perry so ravenously covets.
The only problem with all this of course, is that she’s wrong. Serena doesn’t lack the ad revenue of Sharapova because of racism. She lacks that revenue because she’s not marketable.
Take Tiger Woods for example. Like Serena, Tiger is a black athlete who was once at the top of a nearly all white, white-collar sport. Yet second only to Peyton Manning, Tiger was unsurpassed as an endorser, marketing brands like Nike, but also brands like Tag Heuer and others not always associated with black people.
Where was the “racism and classism” when Tiger was on TV every 8 minutes trying to sell you something during the late 90’s and 2000’s?
Sharapova has more ad dollars than Serena while not being as good because Sharapova is hotter than the surface of the sun. Not that Serena is unattractive in terms of her facial features, but her large and powerful athletic physique makes ad agencies unable to present her as the “every woman.”
A point that is as obvious as it is lost on Hill and Harris-Perry. And what’s up with that “classically presumed” line? Is “classically presumed” the new white privilege?
All I know is it would be a mistake to presume that there’s any class anywhere on MSNBC.
