Charles Barkley Calls Out Media For Making Tyreek Hill Police Detainment About Race

Charles Barkley called out the media on Tuesday for turning Tyreek Hill's detainment into a story about race.

"I hate that we’re gonna throw it in the media because you know the guys are gonna quickly go to race and it bothers me," Barkley said during an appearance on Fox Sports 910 radio in Phoenix. "We got so many fools in the media who love to play the race card. I said, ‘Wait a minute, they just did the same thing to Scottie Scheffler.’"

Indeed.

"The one thing you can’t do as a celebrity, you can’t say, ‘Do you know who I am?’ You say, ‘Yes, sir,’ cooperate one hundred percent. Like I said, I don’t know what happened, but when we let these fools on TV and radio start talking about it, they go straight to, ‘Was it racism?’ I’m like wait a minute now, we don’t know that. I saw the police report say he was uncooperative," Barkley continued. 

"But the one thing I hate when we put stuff in the media and we let guys who race-bait start throwing things out there, like I said, wait a minute, the same thing just happened to Scottie Scheffler, who actually went and got booked! He went down to the big house."

Barkley is correct.

There is no proof race played a role in the incident between Hill and the police. 

As we explained in a column on Tuesday, the footage from the scene (below) shows the following: Hill appearing to speed before being pulled over, arguing with police, refusing to lower his tinted window, refusing to get out of the car when asked, and not complying with orders to get down once removed from the car.

Tyreek Hill initiated the conflict. He was rude and disobedient to the officers. He caused them to react aggressively by rolling up his tinted window, leaving questions about whether he was armed.

And yet, the usual suspects in the press quickly attributed the conflict to race. 

"This is a real and familiar nightmare for many Black men in America," wrote the Washington Post. "Tyreek Hill’s traffic stop revives discussion about the realities faced by Black drivers," read a headline from the AP. Stephen A. Smith called the detainment an example of the "dehumanization" black men face at the hands of police in America. 

Hill is also shown in the body camera footage accusing the police of racism. "I’m just being a black man, that’s it. I’m just being black in America in a nice car," he shouted.

The race card is overused. The race card is racist itself, often used to excuse the bad behavior of black people.  

Unfortunately, few mainstream pundits are willing to call out when the race card is abused. Give Barkley credit for that. Most people of his status shy away from the truth when the truth is inconvenient.

And the inconvenient truth here is that Tyreek Hill, not his skin color, is to blame for his detainment.

Tyreek Hill Incident Underscores Problem With Media Coverage Of Race And Police | Bobby Burack