Bomani Jones took Will Cain to task on his own ESPN Radio show Wednesday for comments about how NASCAR immediately responded to the story of the noose found in the garage of Bubba Wallace.
Earlier today, Cain appeared on First Take where he criticized NASCAR for "rushing to judgment" in their statement when they classified what was found in Wallace's garage as a noose, and condemned it as a "heinous act of racism." An FBI investigation concluded Wednesday that the rope, which was fashioned like a noose, had been there since last fall, and was "not an intentional, racist act against Bubba."
Before his First Take appearance, Cain took to Twitter to make similar points about NASCAR.
NASCAR didn’t care about the truth.
Almost everyone in the media didn’t care about the truth.
Curiosity, questions, and the search for the truth were dismissed as contrarian at best, racist at worst.
Media is broken. Society is broken.
"In society, we have to be calm enough, rational enough to say, could it be true? Could it be false? Could it be a misunderstanding? And we didn't, and because of that, we undercut our credibility, and also, I believe, we undercut the improvement in racial relations," Cain said. "We are going to take a step back because we have sowed distrust, we have sowed division."
Jones called in and took issue with Cain's argument that NASCAR's action around the Bubba Wallace situation was an impediment to race relations.
"The issue is really, the impediment to racism is white people not treating black people as being of equal levels of humanity," Jones said. "Like, that's the answer for all of the time. The reason I wanted to call in, it's very important to note this especially considering the power dynamics. Me viewing you, for example, through the lens of just being a part of a group and not an individual, doesn't have any negative effect on your life. You viewing others the other way actually does have a negative effect on their life. It's not the same thing. We can't do the both sides and human beings are judged like this because there's has been a level of subjection to people in this country that is uncommon and is not something that we can look at across all the world and... describe all this necessarily as tribalism."
Jones continued, "The problem I have is, when you say that what happened with Bubba Wallace is going to be an impediment to race relations. Nah, man, those people rolling on Speedway Boulevard before that race with those flags flying, those are an impediment to race relations. The person that had a flag, had a thing that said 'defund NASCAR' on Sunday over the track, that's an impediment to race relations. [...] Those are far bigger impediments."
Check out their discussion below, courtesy of Black Sports Online.
After the discussion aired, people took to social media to praise Jones' analysis.
How Will Cain producers was looking at him while bomani was cooking him up lol pic.twitter.com/4BDRf6Jmjw
Will Cain vs. Bomani pic.twitter.com/RiQ8mx4YQy
Will Cain trending? Time to drop this gem from unc pic.twitter.com/5FMgKKz26f
A replay of what Bomani Jones just did to Will Cain on his own show pic.twitter.com/ntsGXhNDtI
Bomani cooking Will Cain something serious right now.
I've said this time and time again. But @bomani_jones is one of the smartest people on television. Not sports television. But television period.
Listen to today's conversation he had with Will Cain.
I know he doesn’t need kudos from me or anyone, but man, @bomani_jones is brilliant. That exchange he had earlier with William earlier was a master class. “Asking for the Benefit of the Doubt” is a simple yet perfect response to th phony umbrage taken by so many regarding racism
