Now Reading
SIDELINED: Sports journalist quits to be GOP colorblindness evangelist

SIDELINED: Sports journalist quits to be GOP colorblindness evangelist

Michele Tafoya quit NBC Sports to enter the world of hard right politics, going on white nationalist Tucker Carlson's Fox Entertainment program.

The NFL has seen itself transformed over the past few years from simply a sports league to a nexus of political controversy, and a former face of the league’s network coverage, Michele Tafoya is going to plunge herself into the Republican colorblindness movement which is antithetical to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Thus, the news that Tafoya, a long-running sideline reporter for NBC Sports Sunday Night Football, was leaving her broadcasting career to devote herself to politics full-time seems right in line with the direction that the sports league as a whole has been headed off the field.

The former side-line commentator said that she will now be the co-chair of a political campaign for Kendall Qualls, a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota, and detailed her mission of being a “voice against CRT (critical race theory) and other radically progressive policies.”

Ever since Colin Kaepernick took began taking a knee at games to reinforce the idea that Black lives matter — and suddenly found himself a persona non grata amongst NFL team owners — the league has been forced to deal with issues that go far beyond whether a certain quarterback drew an advantage by using underinflated footballs.

Whether it be players who refuse to get vaccinated, racism in its hiring practices for coaching positions, or having their every move dissected by Donald Trump, the NFL can no longer pretend to be isolated from the vicissitudes of the political landscape.

Tafoya discussed her decision to abandon her sportscasting career in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s program on Fox News Entertainment last night. On the show, she tried to frame the decision as her own, despite having a disastrous run on The View sitting in the conservative chair abandoned by the daughter of a famous Republican. That’s where she used a kind of strange personal anecdote to explain her colorblindness theory and opposition to teaching the much-maligned and misinterpreted theory that is rarely discussed outside the confines of graduate school academia:

My son’s first best friend was a little African-American boy,” The former sportscaster began. “They were inseparable. Get to a certain age they start having what’s called an affinity group, which means you go for lunch and pizza with people who look like you … At kids in school, there is a big, big focus on the color of your skin and my children … Why are we even teaching that the color of the skin matters? Because to me, what matters is your character and your values. … I don’t care if I’m attacked. I really am not afraid of that, and I guess I feel like so many people now are afraid. Yeah. And I’m not.”

Last night on the Carlson propaganda hour, she explained:

“It breaks my heart that my kids are being taught that skin color matters. To me, if you want white people to step up, was stepping up-

I was stepping up when I addressed the school and said, ‘Why are we having these picnics for families of color? Why are we separating our kids? If the world is integrated, let’s continue that and have everyone find out what we all have in common?’

Making the former NBC sports reporter’s heel turn complete is that it came on the show run by Fox’s top election denier while she claimed to be a “moderate” whose views weren’t getting traction.

Tafoya’s assault on critical race theory caught the attention of another prominent female sportscaster, Jemele Hill, formerly an ESPN anchor who recently made the jump to CNN.

Hill, one of the few African-American women to achieve success in a sportscasting field dominated by men, sounded indignant over Tafoya’s stance towards CRT in a tweet she posted after reading an account of the ex-NBC Sports commentator’s appearance with Tucker Carlson.

Hill’s challenge to Latoya highlights the way an esoteric graduate-level sociological theory has been misinterpreted and transformed into a political cudgel to be exploited by Republican politicians.

Many of these Republicans don’t even have the slightest understanding of what critical race theory actually is and misrepresent not only what it actually entails, but the extent of its reach within our educational system.

Now, this longtime former NBC reporter is ending her career over her opposition to a GOP manufactured outrage campaign, and last night signals that we won’t have heard the last of her brand of race-ignorant colorblindness and blind to the impact of race approach in the Republican party.

We want to hear what YOU have to say. Scroll down and let us know in our comment section!

OD STAFF

© 2022 Occupy Democrats. All Rights Reserved.

Scroll To Top