San Diego TV station accused of racism over celebrity ‘baby daddies’ segment
Of the 18 celebrity fathers named, nine were Black.
A San Diego radio station has dropped a popular morning show after the local NAACP criticized a segment about “Famous Baby Daddies” as racist.
The segment aired Monday on KUSI’s Good Morning San Diego Show, featuring the hosts of The DSC Show on IHeartMedia radio, per the Los Angeles Times reports. The hosts guessed which of the 18 celebrity fathers pictured during the segment have the most children. Of the celebrity fathers named, nine were Black.
San Diego NAACP president Francine Maxwell took issue with the segment.
“If we learned anything from the #MeToo movement, it is that powerful men of all races and walks of life sometimes use their power to obtain sexual favors,” Maxwell said in a statement Tuesday. “By focusing on African American men, this content was obviously intended to denigrate them and feed into the lie that Black men are somehow more sexual than their white counterparts.”
Maxwell added “This trope continued in the Jim Crow era, when Black men were regularly lynched on the excuse of sexual advances toward white women, often invented or imagined. Unspeakable things were done to Black men, while white men, women and even children watched with glee.”
After Maxwell called out KUSI over the segment, Steve Cohen, news director for KUSI-TV, said The DSC Show was asked to apologize on-air to KUSI viewers, per the report.
“KUSI believes that it is our goal to always present content that does not demean or appear insensitive to any minority, racial or ethnic group,” Cohen said in a statement. “This past Monday, a feature segment aired that did not meet that standard. The segment created by the 101.5 KGB radio program, ‘The DSC Show,’ was inappropriate and an affront to our African American community and our viewers.”
The statement said that officials with The DSC Show refused to apologize.
“As a result, KUSI has decided to no longer provide a platform for the KGB – DSC Show,” the statement said. “KUSI will be contacting our NAACP chapter and its president to further discuss this incident.”
Maxwell said more than 40 people contacted the NAACP to complain about the segment.
“I don’t know if somebody didn’t take the course on Sensitivity 101, but I don’t think the community would have reached out with such disgust if the segment had not focused on Black celebrity fathers,” she said.
The iHeart page for The DSC Show describes it as “news with a healthy dose of humor to create San Diego’s most dependably hilarious morning show.” The DSC Show personalities are Dave Rickards, Cookie “Chainsaw” Randolph, Chris Boyer, Emily Maguire, and Sarah Beebe.
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