Dr. Boyce: Tom Joyner’s Tasteless Assault on Tavis Smiley and Cornel West

July 4, 2011 By Staff View Comments

I love Tom Joyner.  In case you’re wondering, in “black political speak,” when a commentator mentions that they love someone, that means that they are about to crack a walnut over their forehead.  I remember Tavis Smiley telling Al Sharpton that he loved him right before he proceeded to attack him with the ferocity of an angry baby’s mama looking for additional child support.

My mouth hit the floor this week as Joyner (aka “The Fly Jock”), the man whose work ethic I respect like no other, somehow had the audacity (in a recent article) to compare Tavis Smiley and Cornel West to Mark Halperin, the MSNBC commentator who referred to President Barack Obama as a d*ck on national television.   You no longer need to speculate as to whether or not Tom has a personal issue with Tavis Smiley, the cat fighting is now out of the bag.

While there is certainly room for Tom to disagree with Tavis and Cornel’s critiques of President Obama (it’s ok to criticize the criticizer), Tom’s comparison of Cornel and Tavis with Halperin is entirely off-base.  Smiley and West have never, at any point, used such distasteful language and the kind of one-syllable thinking that Halperin used during his insult of President Obama.  In fact, even Smiley’s critiques have grown more diplomatic and thoughtful through time, and I still look forward to any of the president’s senior advisors taking the time to explain why Smiley and West are wrong (note: when people can’t debate the facts, they avoid the issues and simply try to discredit you).

But it is Tom Joyner himself who has joined Halperin in the ideological basement by making comments that would be better suited for a high school locker room:

“I said I’d wait until something pissed me off so bad that I would have the words harsh enough to express what I was really feeling about him and his side piece – I mean side kick – Cornel West,” said Joyner.

Now, I don’t know what hood you’re from, but in my city, referring to a man’s friend as his “side piece” is usually a reference to his sexuality.  Whether Tom is trying to imply that the relationship between West and Smiley is more than meets the eye, I have no idea.  But this kind of remark has no place in print during such a critical point in the history of black American political discourse.

Joyner goes further on his peculiar tirade by claiming that somehow, Halperin’s vulgar remarks about President Obama were encouraged by the decision of West and Smiley to critique Obama Administration policies:

“These two have done much worse than what Halperin has done because they set the tone for it, opened the door to it, and must take much of the blame for creating a climate that would make a white, professional journalist feel comfortable verbally and vulgarly attacking the first black president of the United States.”


OK.  So there you have it.  If you disagree with Obama Administration policies on dealing with the black unemployment or mass incarceration crisis, you have now given permission to any white man in America to refer to President Obama as a d*ck. So, the only logical solution would be for all black Americans to mute their Democratic voice and remain silent about any policy with which they disagree.

Tom goes deeper in expressing his personal issues with Tavis by taking us on a trip down memory lane.  He explains how Tavis went from being an empowered advocate for black people to becoming the selfish, jealous, tortured soul who was determined to destroy black America by disagreeing with President Obama.
“I had so much respect for him before his primary goal became selling books, and, later, selling out,” said Joyner.  He also says that, “I’ve already fired Tavis and Cornel. There’s nothing either can ever do for me or with me again.”

Joyner’s remark about selling books and selling out seems a bit odd from a man who’s earned millions with his “black activism brought to you by Walmart.”  I also remember Tom’s defense of Walmart when we fought on the case of Heather Ellis, a black college student who was facing 15-years in prison for cutting in line at one of their stores (Walmart mysteriously “lost” the videotape that showed Heather being slammed to the ground by police).  During my appearance on the Tom Joyner Morning Show to discuss the case, I was disappointed to see Tom standing in defense of Walmart like the slave holding the broom on massa’s front porch.   As a Business School Professor, I can appreciate Tom’s ability to work capitalism to his advantage, but he is the last millionaire who should be challenging Smiley’s decision to sell products.


Perhaps Tom might consider the possibility that the reason Tavis and Cornel have endured the criticism they’ve received for speaking out is because they care for black people so much.  In spite of their imperfections, Cornel and Tavis have an undeniable and storied track record when it comes to advocating for African American issues.  The same can be said for Tom Joyner, Al Sharpton and others who disagree with them.  The reality is that they simply have different approaches to solving the same problem, but their advocacy is no less genuine than those who embrace a different set of tactics.

By debasing the conversation into such a nasty personal attack, Tom has engaged in the very same dastardly behavior that many felt Tavis displayed back in 2008.  If Tom is indeed attempting to imply that Tavis or Cornel is gay or bi-sexual, then he is simply using homophobia in black America to get people distracted from the core issue.  I expect more from Tom Joyner, and I sincerely hope he has the maturity to issue an apology.  Most significantly, his efforts to terrorize dissenting voices in the black community by demanding that they remain silent is nothing short of ruthless, un-American and ultimately oppressive – I encourage anyone listening to this foolishness to reach for their own facts and form individual opinions without allowing prominent black folks to shape their thinking.  A man who truly loves black people doesn’t act this way, and Tom Joyner might need to grow up.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

Sharpton, West to Debate on Obama, Black Agenda



Rev. Al Sharpton (left) and scholar Cornel West will engage in a debate at 12:30 p.m. Friday at the NNPA convention.

 The debate over President Barack Obama’s performance on the black agenda deepens this weekend, when community activist Rev. Al Sharpton and scholar Cornel West engage in a debate at 12:30 p.m. central time Friday afternoon at the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s annual conference in Chicago.

The pair had a heated discussion about Obama in April on the MSNBC special "The Black Agenda," hosted by Ed Schultz.

West leveled blistering criticism of Obama, arguing not only that the president has failed to do enough to reduce black unemployment, but suggesting Obama was no more than a “black mascot” for the rich.

Sharpton, in response, said many black leaders have gotten behind the president to help him press a more progressive agenda and put pressure on a Congress that has largely been resistant to the measures that would best serve the black community.

“Too many of us are putting it all on the president,” Sharpton said on MSNBC in April. “If I see a [Rep. Paul] Ryan in Congress, where is the counterpoint to Ryan? That’s not President Obama’s job ... He shouldn’t lead the civil rights marches against himself. Everybody’s sitting around acting like we can’t do anything; Obama’s going to do it. That’s hogwash.”

Critics say Ryan (R-Wis.) has come up with a counter to the health care legislation Obama signed into law last March, as well as other budget initiatives which would disenfranchise millions of poor and underserved Americans.

West maintains that black congressional leaders were hesitant to lead on issues themselves and to challenge Obama.

“They have a black constituency, and there’s a context in the nation that a criticism of President Obama is an attempt to support the right-wing vicious attacks of Fox News and others,” West said.

After Friday’s debate at NNPA, there will be a national leaders forum moderated by Harvard Law School Prof. Charles Ogletree, featuring Chuck Morrison of Ford Motor Co., Benjamin Chavis of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, Georgetown University Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, Rainbow PUSH founder Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous; Maulana Karenga, PhD., founder of US, and Sharpton.

The conference will focus primarily on the challenges and opportunities facing black newspapers.

Full information on the conference, including programming and registration details, is available at http://www.nnpa.org/.

Dr. Boyce: Attacking Cornel West Does Not Resolve the Black Political Problem

by Dr. Boyce Watkins, YourBlackWorld.com

If a man is offered a piece of stale bread for dinner, he’s probably not going to want to eat it.  If you were to then say, well, “stale bread is better than horse manure,” this won’t make the stale bread taste any better.  When given the choice between bad food and horrible food, some people would just rather not eat or try to eat someplace else.

But this is what black America is being fed when they are told that they should passionately support the Democrats simply because the Republicans are going to be worse.  The meal is being fed, in part, by elitist liberals like Melissa Harris Perry at Tulane University (formerly Princeton), a darker-skinned staple in the white liberal establishment and fully-indoctrinated member in the Barack Obama fan club.   In a recent article where Perry works diligently to dismiss the political and scholarly relevance of Dr. Cornel West (a huge mistake on her part, since West earned his stripes when Perry was still in high school), she reproduces the same rhetoric that Ivy Leaguers utilize to somehow convince rank-and-file black folks to start seeing things that simply don’t exist.  The same political magic trick was used when the administration got a tiny militia of black Harvard Law Professors to campaign on behalf of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court in spite of her undeniably racist hiring record – this is how Harvard and Yale folks take care of one another.  Notice that our entire Supreme Court is full of Ivy League graduates; the elite protect their power by manipulating the minds of poor and working class Americans.

Let’s be clear, I am no fan of the disposition against President Obama taken three years ago by Tavis Smiley.  I took Tavis to the carpet for his very personal assault on Obama, which I speculate might explain why he hasn’t ever spoken to me (I could actually care less, to be honest).  I am neither an Obama critic nor am I a super fan.   My agenda is simple:  I want to see leading politicians address massive black unemployment, mass incarceration, rampant racial discrimination in the workplace and the dysfunctional educational systems that are destroying black children and families.  To date, politicians are not standing strong on nearly any of these issues, and given that our surveys show that these problems affect the vast majority of the black community, this should be a concern.

What disturbs me most about the calls I’ve received from the White House and others who somehow believe that we are helping the president by resigning our right to free speech, is that the political types in Washington are more concerned about who gets blamed for the problem than they are about solving the problem.  After Dr. Wilmer Leon and I spoke about the seemingly unproductive relationship between the Obama Administration and the Congressional Black Caucus, most prominent critics of that conversation could only ask, “Why are you blaming Valerie Jarrett for canceling meetings with the CBC?”  Most interesting is that I spoke to Dr. Leon because he could provide an objective opinion on political strategy without any of the selfish agendas that drive those who either reject or support the president outright.  Dr. Leon makes it clear that if you spend all of your time either hating the Obama Administration for no reason or popping champagne bottles because you think we’ve hit Juneteenth Part II, you are not using your political voice in an effective way.

I don’t care if the responsibility for Washington’s political apathy falls on Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama, the CBC or the pet chicken in the front yard.  All I know is that I just talked the daughter of a formerly incarcerated man who told me that none of his five children graduated from high school because their father was not there to guide them.  I am not sure why any black person on the planet would have any incentive whatsoever to vehemently support an administration with a black male attorney general who has not lifted a finger to reform a justice system that is undeniably racist.

So, perhaps those who are quick to implement the “stop snitching on Obama” policy on Cornel West should stop trying to counter his argument by telling West to remain silent.  Instead, he should be silenced with relevant and meaningful action on the part of the Obama Administration.  Spinning, twisting and reshaping the conversation means nothing when black unemployment continues to rise, mass incarceration decimates our people and our children are not being educated.  You can either get angry at someone for calling you fat, or you can take your fat butt to the gym.  Unfortunately, it’s easier for Washington types and elitist liberals to use political double-speak than it is for them to point to concrete evidence that working and middle class black people (the bulk of whom experience rampant and unregulated discrimination in the workplace) have a reason to be excited about the next election.  Whether they should reject President Obama vs. his Republican counterparts is debatable; but whether they should reject all of Washington is undeniable.

The bottom line is simple:  Giving black folks a choice between stale bread and horse manure is not going to make them want to eat at your restaurant.  It’s time for some political courage and action, instead of asking us to submit to a system that clearly isn’t working.  Whether one agrees with Cornel West or not, he must ultimately be given credit for guiding the conversation back to poor, black and brown people.  Attacking West for pointing out the obvious is nothing more than a counter-productive distraction.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.