Journalist Jemele Hill on the intersection of sports and race

Berkeley Talks

On Jan. 23, 2020, Jemele Hill, a staff writer for the Atlantic and host of the podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered, spoke at UC Berkeley's Cal Performances about her career at the intersection of sports, race and culture in the U.S. In conversation with with KALW's radio host and reporter, Hana Baba, Hill touched on the NFL and Colin Kaepernick, what it's like reporting on sports as a black woman and how her life changed after President Trump tweeted about her.

"I mean, the NFL owners are spineless," Hill told Baba. "And I knew Colin Kaepernick would never play in the NFL the moment Donald Trump said his name... One of the few things that a lot of people unfortunately agree with the president about is that Colin Kaepernick should not be taking a knee. So, he [Trump] knows every time he says his [Kaepernick's] name, that it is giving him a level of universal support ... that he's doesn't experience usually.

"And so, what does that say about people in this country? I'm also old enough to remember that we just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, commemorated him. And the same people I saw talking about how great Dr. King was for his nonviolent protest, are also the same people who think Colin Kaepernick doesn't deserve to play in the NFL? ... But the NFL, as we have seen in the case with Muhammad Ali, as we have seen the case in a lot of history, 20 years from now, they'll be telling a different story. They'll act like all of this never happened."

Read the transcript and listen to the conversation on Berkeley News.

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