OPINION: Pat McAfee managed to make MLK Day about himself while embracing an expression that includes the N-word. This is not what Martin Luther King Jr. died for.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more
In case you missed it, McAfee almost lost his mind on an ESPN college football show last month when an Alabama player’s motto came up. Host Rece Davis said – slyly – that the acronym stands for “Let A Naysayer Know.” McAfee interjected as Davis continued to speak.
“That is not what I thought,” he said, as one Black broadcaster (Joey Galloway) started laughing and the other (Desmond Howard) tried to keep a straight face. “Let a naysayer know?” McAfee said, incredulously. With laughter roiling the set, McAfee said, “It got real tight up here.” Galloway said, “I thought it was going down!”
Just like that — as two Black guys yukked it up with two white guys (Davis and Kirk Herbstreit) — “naysayer” replaced the N-word that everyone was thinking about.
I remember seeing a T-shirt years ago that read: “If you see the police, let a ni**a know.” LANK is a common phrase in Black vernacular, thus McAfee’s reaction to the edited version. And he thinks that TV moment brought us closer to MLK’s dream?
Naysayer, please.
(For the record, “naysayer” is now officially off-limits to white people and they should keep it out of their mouth when in mixed company, just like the real word. Same rules apply.)
The rest of McAfee’s MLK tribute was crazy, too, saying “There’s an election about to take place this year where we need to remember that we are more close than we have ever been. And people could potentially try to drive us apart from the outside looking in. … Two political parties canceled me last week and we are still alive. Let’s remember we don’t need all the outside noise. All we need is a little bit of love.”
We need a lot more truth and fact-checking, which are sorely lacking during MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ weekly appearances.
A week earlier, the noted conspiracy theorist suggested that comedian Jimmy Kimmel was connected to accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. ESPN issued an apology, but Rodgers was back on the program one day later. Public outrage made McAfee cry “canceled,” though he remains on air daily at a reported $17 million per year.
That’s a whole lotta white privilege, the ability to make MLK Day about yourself, embrace the N-word and low-key endorse anti-Black politics. McAfee certainly doesn’t stick to sports like former ESPNers Jemele Hill, Michael Smith and Cari Champion were instructed. Those who think like McAfee need to heed a less-famous MLK verse until the lesson takes.
“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance,” King wrote in “Where Do We Go From Here.” “It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
Where are the willing students?
We’re dying to teach.
Deron Snyder, from Brooklyn, is an award-winning columnist who lives near D.C. and pledged Alpha at HU-You Know! He’s reaching high, lying low, moving on, pushing off, keeping up, and throwing down. Got it? Get more at blackdoorventures.com/deron.
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