Last week, Sage Steele made news for calling ESPN’s Covid vaccine mandate “sick” and “scary”. Podcast One, the company behind Uncut with Jay Cutler, made sure that clip from Steele’s appearance on the show was shared with multiple media outlets, BSM included.
On Sunday, another clip from the show was picked up and went viral. This time, it wasn’t Podcast One making sure Steele’s words were heard, but the liberal Twitter account @RzstProgramming.
The account sent out a video of Steele and Cutler discussing the former’s racial identity. Steele has a Black father and a White mother. She said that she would not deny either side when filling out the US Census.
“Congratulations to the President, that’s his thing,” Sage Steele says she told a friend that said that Barack Obama chose Black as his race on the Census because bi-racial is not an option. “I think that’s fascinating considering his black dad is nowhere to be found but his white mom and grandma raised him, but okay. You do you. I’m gonna do me.”
It was an undeniable dig at the former president’s racial identity. It seemed that it was her follow up line that drew more criticism.
“Listen, I’m pretty sure my white mom was there when I was born. And my white family loves me as much as my black family.”
Sage Steele and her conservative politics have been the source of controversy with her colleagues at ESPN before. She drew criticism in 2017 for an Instagram post criticizing those protesting the Trump Administration’s immigration policy at LAX. Last year, she was excluded from a network special on issues of race in sports. She famously told The Wall Street Journal that she believed fellow SportsCenter anchors Michael Eaves and Elle Duncan had her “blackballed”.
These comments about Barack Obama’s racial identity were met with plenty of pushback from colleagues on social media.
