On Tuesday morning, CNN legal analyst Areva Martin, appearing as a guest on a show hosted by David Webb, who is a host n Fox Nation and also hosts a show on Sirius XM radio, spoke too soon when she accused him of “white privilege,” prompting Webb to disabuse her of that notion with one simple response.
Webb stated, “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black.”
The exchange came during a debate revolving around the qualifications required for being hired, as Mediate reports, noting, “Webb said as a general rule when applying for jobs he cares more about his work-related expertise and experience, not skin color.”
The exchange began with Webb asking, “Shouldn’t their requirement, their primary requirement, regardless of ethnicity or regardless of net worth, be that they are capable of covering politics? For instance, if you’re going to cover political campaigns, sports may not be the most qualified background. And that brings to the point if people want to get into these fields, regardless of color, I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one; I never considered my color the issue; I considered my qualifications the issue.”
Martin told Webb, “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 asked, “How do I have the privilege of white privilege?”
Martin patronized, “David, by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege. This whole long conversation, I don’t have time to get into —”
Webb interrupted, “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black.”
A hilarious pause, then Martin continued, “I stand —”
Webb interrupted, “You see, you went to white privilege; this is the falsehood in this. You went immediately with an assumption. Your people, obviously, or you didn’t look. You’re talking to a black man.”
Martin: “They gave me the wrong information.”
Webb, determined: “ … 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 at 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: “It is, and I apologize, because my people gave me wrong information.”
Webb: “The whole white privilege thing is insulting.”
Martin: “David, can I apologize and correct the record? I want to apologize. I was given wrong information about you and I apologize.”
Webb concluded, “But based on my color you were going to something I was part of , and just to add to it, my family background is white, black, Indian, Arawak, Irish, Scottish; I mean, it’s so diverse, I’m like the U.N. when it comes to this. And this is part of the problem with driving the narrative around a construct like white privilege. Privilege is one thing where applied well, the economy, various social factors, but not necessarily determined by color of skin.”
Listen here.