During last week’s interview with Youtube sensation and boxer Jake Paul, former ESPN talker Jemele Hill asked Paul if it was “racist” for him to have knocked out his black opponent, Nate Robinson, last month.
Paul appeared on the show Hill co-hosts with Cari Champion, called Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports, in which the two regularly mix politics with sports.
During the interview, Hill asked Paul, “Considering where we are right now in our racial conversation in America, was what you did to Nate Robinson racist?”
“That is the question of the week,” Champion chirped before Paul answered.
Paul seemed a little taken aback by the question and replied, “Nah, stop playin’ with me, come on.”
“Listen, it’s a sensitive time right now, we just had to witness a white man knock out a black man smooth out in front of all of America, and that’s why I asked that,” Hill added with a laugh.
Paul noted that knocking out an opponent is what boxers train for, but then his Internet connection went out for a second. It quickly recovered, though, and Champion felt it necessary to ask the same “is it racist to knock a black man out” question all over again.
After being asked a second time, it appeared that Paul had enough of being tarred as a racist, and said, “Stop asking me that. I said N0! It’s a sh*tty question, it’s a sport.”
But before moving on to other topics, Champion accused Paul of not being “woke” enough and refusing to be part of the “conversation.”
The segment did not sit well with many people. And after being attacked over the interview, Hill took to Twitter to claim that the pair were just being irreverent and that they weren’t all that serious about tarring Paul as a racist.
“I’m now laughing that people actually thought we were serious,” she tweeted on Wednesday.
In another tweet, Hill insisted that the show is just a late-night talk show and is not supposed to be entirely serious:
Granted, Hill and Champion were giggling during the whole segment, but with Champion’s closing shot that Paul wasn’t woke enough, it sure sounded like there were at least some serious undertones to the “joking.” Many took it that way despite the host’s claim that it was a joke.
The condemnation of the bit did not come only from white people, either. Many blacks felt that the segment was cringe-worthy:
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