Jason Lee Whitlock / b. 1967 / Indianapolis, Indiana, USA / Newspaper Reporter, Sports Columnist, Radio Announcer, Podcaster
Note: The specific sources of the following quotes are unknown, but presumably derive from Whitlock’s numerous commentaries, interviews, and podcasts
The Black Community
Certain people and groups seem invested in convincing black people that black people are liberal. We’ve traditionally been conservative, church-going people.
We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted, and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude, and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing, and violent.
There is a business built around racial grievance. And that business is booming at such a level that white people are like hey, I’m going to adopt a whole new identity so I can benefit from being Baby Al Sharpton, Baby Jesse Jackson, and in academia this has been embraced . . .
. . . and that the arming of so many black youths, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].
Racism is an issue in America but is primarily an issue for the poor. It’s not LeBron James’s issue.
Black Lives Matter
There’s no way you can do any homework on Black Lives Matter and not see that it’s a Marxist political organization. It’s not about Black Death. It’s not about black men. It is a political move. It’s a communist political move.
Critical Race Theory
The Colin Kaepernick Kneeling Trojan Horse has turned sports into the victimhood Olympics, the most powerful venue in popular culture to preach critical race excuse-making.
Fear
I think that fear is a mechanism, a tool for control.
If you engage with the police, filled with fear, you’re more likely to make really bad decisions that provoke them to take action.
The Democratic Party, the mainstream media are using fear to control people and to control African Americans in particular. You cannot function properly if you live in an irrational fear.
God
God is the embodiment of love and we are a society that seems to be embracing and favoring hate and empowering hate.
Guns
Handguns do not enhance our safety, they exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation, rather than avoiding it.
Health
Investing in your long-term health means cultivating the skills to prepare your own meals, developing healthy eating habits and a willingness to make time to exercise. The earlier you embrace these habits, the healthier you will be in your 50s, 60s and beyond.
Jim Crow
Jim Crow had unintended benefits. It forced blacks to build and rely on their own economic, educational, and social systems.
Liberalism
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights–movement, Democrats marketed liberalism to us as fashionable, sophisticated, and liberating. Today it needs a surgeon general’s warning: hazardous to your family and the values you were taught as a child.
Life
The sacrifices you make in your 20s pay off 30 and 40 years later. The same is true when it comes to financial progress. Every dime saved in your 20s turns into a dollar in your 60s.
You want to be leaders and you’re black and I’m here to tell you how to do it. Disconnect from this social media garbage; disconnect from these celebrity athletes who don’t really care nothing about you.
It is possible to set your standards too high, which can undermine a man’s confidence and ability to perform. Instead of reaching for the stars and settling for the moon, there is considerable evidence that man is better served reaching for a blade of grass and settling for an under-the-table handshake deal.
Self-analysis is the sworn enemy of regret-free living.
Unchecked pride evolves into swagger, a hypnotizing mask of insecurity that can and does compromise our ability to make progress and attain power. Pride stands in the way of forgiveness and a strategic approach to navigating a chessboard rigged to prevent pawns from becoming kings and queens.
The Media
Journalists used to be obsessed with working at a New York magazine or newspaper or TV network. Now the entire industry is obsessed with going viral and how words will be received via social media.
New York and San Francisco are distinctly different. San Francisco is driving the American media, not New York. You have young, microwaved millionaires and billionaires reshaping the American media in a way that reflects San Francisco values.
What has truly impeded ESPN from overcoming its financial mistakes and inability to adapt to technological advances? The decade-long culture war, ESPN lost to Deadspin, a snarky, politically progressive sports blog launched by Gawker’s Nick Denton in 2005.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Southern, conservative minister who believed in the American promise. His dream was patriotic and traditional. Family, work, self-determination and religion comprised his core values.
Politics
Take your money, pool your resources and support people who actually represent your views and have the time to be full-time involved.
Black people have no reason to fear political free agency.
Poverty
The worst thing to be in America and anywhere on the planet is poor.
Public Discourse
False equivalency is the lifeblood of American public debate.
Words matter, particularly when you’re writing a story that could significantly damage a person’s or an organization’s reputation.
Trust is what leads to the best conversations. People take chances and say what they really think when they trust the person they’re engaging with.
You can be authentic without being distasteful or disrespectful.
We have grown comfortable not having our perspective challenged. It’s unhealthy.
Sports
You can’t be Allen Iverson on a football team. And even Iverson got run out of Philadelphia when he was still a spectacular talent because the Sixers got tired of the headache and his bad attitude.
Men do really dumb things. We see weapons of mass destruction where there are none. We over-emphasize sports. We place athletic achievement ahead of academic achievement. We spoil and pamper child athletes and then complain when they act spoiled and pampered as adults.
Sports culture has long had a major impact on American culture. The values taught and celebrated in sports are conservative.
Far-left political ideologues want to reshape sports culture to their liking.
Professional sports have built themselves on the celebration of Americana, the ideas and values that best exemplify America.
Sports culture is not PC or far left. There are no safe spaces in the field of competition.
Sports culture has long been patriotic, tolerant of diverse backgrounds and perspective and celebratory of meritocracy.
The only place where we’re not segregated en masse is in sports. You go to a football stadium or a basketball arena, and all of America is there: the wealthy, the poor, the black, white, Latino, conservative, liberal, and we all talk about sports.
Texas
I don’t have a beef with Texas. I just don’t think Texans know anything about basketball and they don’t have a sense of humor. Texans take themselves too seriously.
Wealth
Great wealth creates an arrogance and, to be quite frank, a god complex in some people that they start feeling like they can do no wrong, they own people, they’re superior to other people.
Whitlock on Whitlock
My dad didn’t graduate high school. My mom is a high school graduate. My mom is a factory worker. My dad owned a bar in the inner city.
I’m not a political partisan. I don’t vote.
But at the end of the day, in order for me to reach my full potential, I need an environment that allows me to be me. . . . The executives at Fox Sports get and embrace me. Fox Sports allows me to be real.
Judge my columns, enjoy my tweets. That’s my philosophy.
Seriously, I was the wrong fit at ESPN. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Have I been an entertainer, a provocateur, and a humorist? Absolutely.
I’m a bit of a rabble-rouser.
Whatever my critics say, I’ve been a hard-core journalist all my career.
I didn’t brown-nose my way here. I pulled out guns and shot my way here. So people don’t mind shooting back. If I’d gotten here brown-nosing and playing all the political games, I’d probably be treated differently.
Personally, I’m not all that interested in making the show appealing to casual sports fans.
I will talk to anybody… You want to talk, let’s talk.
I’m a conservative dude from the Midwest. I went crazy out here in LA.
I don’t do stand-up anymore. There are no rules in stand-up comedy. Journalists follow plenty of rules.
I eat raw vegetables. But my “30 for 30” documentary better include sit-down interviews with Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, and Little Debbie.
I’ve been a solo act, a columnist, and worked from home, only relying on myself. Now I’m part of a team, a leader, and I have to fit in at a big corporation and deal with all the moving parts, all the different personalities. That has been a challenge, to be quite honest, that I’ve embraced.