Stephen A. Smith dug a deep hole for himself on Monday’s edition of First Take when he made offensive comments about Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani before showing blatant insensitivity to the Nigerian men’s basketball team.
Just 24 hours, the ESPN host has started to do the work to dig himself out.
Smith found himself in hot water on Monday after he posited that the Japanese-born Ohtani would never have the ability to be the face of the Major League Baseball because he uses a translator to speak to the media. In a later segment about Team USA’s recent exhibition loss, he dismissed the Nigerian national team and neglected to pronounce the names of the Nigerian players correctly.
Now, the ESPN host has been left to make amends for both insensitive instances. Smith issued another apology at the beginning of his ESPN+ show, Stephen A’s World for his offensive remarks about Ohtani and the Nigerian national team.
“I want to start the show today the only way it should start today: with an apology. My sincere apology, that is from me, from the heart. Not from the network, not from anybody else, just me…” Smith said. “What I said about Shohei Ohtani on First Take hurt the Asian community and hurt the Asian-American community. When I spoke about the Nigerian basketball team, on the very same show, I hurt people as well. So it doesn’t matter what my opinion was, or what my intentions were. What matters, is that I messed up.
“I intend to learn and listen to people in those communities to better understand their perspectives… I messed up and I hurt people with my words. For that, I apologize.”
I had to start off today’s show by apologizing to the Asian and Nigerian communities. pic.twitter.com/m2Jlu9UQxH
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 13, 2021
Smith’s apology on Stephen A’s World comes after he opened Tuesday’s episode of First Take by addressing his offensive remarks. The show also welcomed on Jeff Passan and Joon Lee to have a discussion about why the ESPN host’s comments weren’t acceptable.
“Let me be the first to stand up and say that I want to express my sincere apologies to the Asian community and the Asian-American community,” Smith said to open the show. “I am a Black man. I religiously go off about minorities being marginalized in this nation. I instantly go off, repeatedly bring up the fact that if you are a member of a community that feels disenfranchised in any way, that’s something we need to battle, we need to fend off to the best of our ability as a nation.
“These are the kinds of things that I bring up, and the reason that I bring up my Blackness is because of this: on many occasions, what I have said when people have said something that is offensive, in any way, to the minority community, it’s not about how you feel. It is about how they feel. And the reality of the situation is that you have Asians and Asian-Americans out there that obviously were very, very offended by what I had to say yesterday. I want to extend my apologies, that was not my intent at all…”
My opening remarks on @FirstTake. pic.twitter.com/mDWheRkW7j
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 13, 2021
Stephen A. Smith also posted an apology note on Twitter on Monday night after he received widespread backlash over the course of the day.
Now that Smith has started to make amends, he needs to continue to learn from his comments earlier this week and be more intentional with his analysis moving forward.
The post Stephen A. Smith Offers New Apology For Controversial Comments appeared first on The Spun.
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