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Earlier this week, 95.5 WSB host Shelley Wynter appeared as a panelist on CNN. Comments he made caused an uproar, and now he’s defending them.
While discussing the upcoming election on CNN News Central with Sarah Sidner, Wynter used language that critics called racially insensitive to describe the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
“Let me boil this election down in the African American community to a very simple — I’ll reference the great Malcolm X,” he said. “This race is between house African Americans and field African Americans, and field African Americans are voting for [Donald] Trump.”
The comments were immediately met with pushback by other panelists before social media criticism added to the situation.
In an interview with NBC News, Shelley Wynter did not backtrack on his statements.
“I’m a radio show host,” he said. “If I pick the Jets over the Giants, I face criticism. No matter what I say, people are going to disagree with me.”
He continued by stating that those who are critical of his comments misunderstand the point he’s trying to make.
“There’s an argument to be made that we’re all technically slaves to this system, whether you’re Democrat or Republican,” Wynter said. “No one’s being called a slave. It’s using an analogy in the context of what it was used, the same as when Malcolm was explaining something, and he wasn’t calling Black people slaves when he gave that speech.
“He was saying that this was an attitudinal thing. There are people in the Black community who, when they’re close to power — i.e., master — they will take on the attributes and defend that power. And that’s what we’re seeing now with this race.”
