Attorney and CNN analyst Areva Martin found herself in an incredibly awkward situation when she accused Sirius XM radio host and Fox News contributor David Webb of benefiting from his “white privilege” — even though the man is black.
Martin (pictured above right) spoke with Webb (above left) during a segment on his radio show on Monday.
The two discussed a range of topics, from attorney general nominee William Barr’s confirmation hearings to the cable news networks’ lack of racial diversity.
In particular, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently called out CBS News for failing to hire any black reporters to cover the 2020 presidential election process.
“This WH admin has made having a functional understanding of race in America one of the most important core competencies for a political journalist to have, yet @CBSNews hasn’t assigned a *single* black journalist to cover the 2020 election. Unacceptable in 2019. Try again,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Saturday — using asterisks around words she wants to emphasizes, as she often does in her tweets.
This WH admin has made having a functional understanding of race in America one of the most important core competencies for a political journalist to have, yet @CBSNews hasn’t assigned a *single* black journalist to cover the 2020 election.
Unacceptable in 2019. Try again. https://t.co/h7tmiBr9Fi
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 13, 2019
Webb told Martin he personally chose “to cross different parts of the media world” during his career and did “the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one.”
“I never considered my color the issue. I considered my qualifications the issue,” Webb said, without verbally revealing his race.
A simple Google image search ahead of time, of course, is all it would have taken for Martin to see that Webb is black.
Nevertheless, Martin pounced on Webb for advocating for merit and work experience over racial considerations in landing jobs.
“Well, David, you know, that’s a whole ‘nother long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of,” Martin said.
A seemingly incredulous Webb replied, “How do I have the privilege of white privilege?”
Martin retorted, “David, by virtue of being a white male, you have white privilege.”
Webb said, “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black.”
After a brief pause, Martin replied, “OK. Then I stand corrected.”
Webb rebuked Martin for resorting immediately to claims of “white privilege” while failing to take into consideration that he could, in fact, be black.
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“You went immediately with an assumption — your people obviously, or you, didn’t look,” Webb said. “You’re talking to a black man who started out in rock radio in Boston who crossed the paths into hip-hop rebuilding one of the greatest black stations in American and went on to work for Fox News — where I’m told apparently blacks aren’t supposed to work.”
“But yet, you come with [an] assumption and you go to white privilege. That’s actually insulting,” Webb continued.
Martin replied, “It is, and I apologize because my people gave me wrong information.”
“The whole white privilege thing is insulting,” Webb added.
Check out more in the video below:
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