David Webb gets CNN’s Areva Martin to apologize . . . for her staff

David Webb called Areva Martin out on her mindless assumption about white privilege, but she didn’t rethink it; she just blamed her staff for bad briefing.

David Webb Areva MartinPerhaps you’ve already heard about Areva Martin, a CNN legal analyst who happens to be black, tell David Webb, a Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation personality who is also black, that he is the beneficiary of “white privilege.” If you haven’t heard this radio broadcast, you absolutely have to listen to it.

Really: listening is not optional, not just because of the white privilege narrative that plays on an endless loop in Martin’s head, but also because of her response to facts — in this case, the fact being that Webb is black, not white:

For those who can’t get the audio to play, Webb talks about the fact that qualifications, not ethnicity or wealth matter when it comes to finding a place in the media world. To elaborate on this issue, he notes that worked across several different fields in the media and gained qualifications in all. This dialogue then ensued:

MARTIN: Well, David, that’s a whole ‘other long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing that people of color don’t have the privilege of. . . .

WEBB: How do I have the privilege of white privilege?

MARTIN: David, by virtue of being a white male, you have white privilege.

WEBB: Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should have been better prepped. I’m black … See, you went to white privilege. This is the falsehood in this. You went immediately with an assumption … You’re talking to a black man who started out in rock radio in Boston, who crossed the paths into hip-hop, rebuilding one of the greatest black stations in America, and went on to work for Fox News, where I’m told apparently blacks aren’t supposed to work, but yet you come with this assumption and you go to white privilege. That’s actually insulting!

Martin was manifestly taken aback by this information and stuttered out an apology. Webb, however, continued to take her to task for her race-based assumptions. I don’t have a transcript of that portion, so be sure to listen to it. He makes a marvelous case for abandoning Leftist identity politic shibboleths.

When Webb challenges Martin’s assumptions, Martin does apologize, which is the right thing to do. What’s fascinating is the way in which she apologizes. Echoing Webb’s sarcastic remark about the fact that she “should have been better prepped,” she blames her staff — and that’s the sum total of her apology.

At no point in the snippet available online does Martin apologize for her mindless reliance on the white privilege narrative, a narrative so strong that it was inconceivable to her that facts could differ from her bias. And as I said, when Martin exposes Martin’s bias and challenges it on the merits, she does not even attempt to address the merits. She’s only embarrassed that she’s been caught in a racial error, rather than regretting or trying to defend a fundamental conceptual error.

Incidentally, Martin is a product of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School. Apparently whatever else those once reputable institutions are teaching, neither logic nor intellectual humility are on the curriculum. Martin Luther King, Jr., who famously imagined a world in which people were judged by the content of their character (and, presumably, their accomplishments) rather than the color of their skin, also seems to have been left off of Martin’s high-end Progressive education.

As I said, I know only the snippet that’s making the rounds. If you have heard the entire discussion and if Martin seems to be rethinking her white privilege assumption, please let me know and I will update this post.


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