Jemele Hill: ‘I care and I’m passionate, but I’m not bothered by people’s opinions of me’
Jemele Hill knew the moment she hit send to tweet about President Trump, she’d get some backlash.
On 11 September 2017, in the middle of a 12-tweet debate with Twitter followers, Hill posted: “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
“I didn’t really expect the reaction that it created because, honestly, I didn’t think I was saying anything all that controversial. I wasn’t the first person to even say it,” Hill said. “I was very surprised by the reaction.”
The tweet generated backlash from sports fans, the media, and eventually, Trump himself. Soon, Hill found herself at the intersection of race, politics and gender collided with sports.
Hill, 46, addresses this intersectionality, the traverses and detours her career, and the personal speed bumps she cleared along the way, in her new book: Uphill: A Memoir, released on 25 October.
The day after the Twitter war of words, ESPN issued a statement saying Hill’s comments do not represent the network and that they had addressed the issue, and she recognized that her actions were inappropriate.
A few weeks later, Hill tweeted about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ declaration that none of his players better kneel during the national anthem. She then encouraged people to boycott advertisers who supported the Cowboys.
This time, ESPN suspended Hill for two weeks for violating the company’s social media policy, again. “Tired of pretending,” Hill left ESPN in 2018 to join the Atlantic. She also hosts a podcast, Jemele Hill is Unbothered, which is part of her podcast production company, Unbothered Network.
Hill covers the suspension and other controversial topics in her memoir. However, column controversy is not the focus. Instead, Hill pours personal trauma from heart to prose, revealing a complicated life that manifests in a public persona.
“I felt like a lot of the things I wrote about in the memoir, particularly the very personal details of my life and my mother’s history, were all things that I had already dealt with a long time ago. I felt like I might be opening doors that may be better left shut.”
Hill opens the door wide, giving readers a tour of a childhood filled without enough drama for three Netflix series. In the memoir, Hill describes a scene in which she lay in one of her father’s arms as a heroin needle hung from his other arm. She briefly died and witnessed her mother trade companionship for help with the bills. All this happened before she began an impressive journalism career.
Finding her voice
Since journaling as a child, writing has provided an outlet, a way for her to turn “pain into perspective”.
“I think one of the key traits that makes you a good journalist, and I think any journalist should have, is empathy,” she said. “I like to think that a lot of times I write with empathy, and that is because of the way that I grew up, some of the trauma that I’ve experienced, some of the trauma I’ve seen play out in my own family.”
In 2010, when Tim Tebow appeared in an anti-abortion commercial with his mother, Hill, who is pro-abortion, wrote a column praising the quarterback’s bravery.
“I understand his politics because I’ve actually been to church with Tim Tebow. I knew that he looked at everything from a Christian mindset, and that informed the issues he supported and maybe even how he voted,” she said.
Allowing personal experience to spill over into her writing is a departure from what Hill learned from her mentors, who always told her to avoid being part of the story. Journalists aren’t supposed to make the headlines.
However, when she arrived at ESPN, she had to adjust to what she called celebrity journalism culture.
“You write about things, you about talk things … at any given time, you have millions of people who are tuning in,” she said. “I definitely went through some growing pains getting adjusted to that.”
Despite some of the biggest names on ESPN, with the loudest voices and the fattest contracts, Hill learned that there is a limit to self-expression when working for corporate media. “I think most people don’t understand how corporate journalism is, and how conservative it is,” she said.
“I remember early on, when I was still developing as a columnist, I used to think about my voice in a much different way. I thought it just kind of magically happened. I didn’t realize that it’s really something you have to work on and practice,” she said. “So I had to get better at being me. I know that might sound kind of crazy because you feel like you’re me all the time, but I do think depending on the situation, we may edit ourselves or minimize ourselves. Once I stopped doing that I think people could understand fully who I was.”
Current climate in sports
Hill believes it is difficult to extract sports from the political and culture wars airing in public. For example, fans, podcasts host and even players like Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers demonize the term “woke”.
“When I hear people say the word woke, my very first question is, ‘What does that mean?’”
The term woke originated with the phrase stay woke, which was used in the African-American community to encourage awareness about civil rights and social justice issues.
“In the current climate, it’s a lot of people using the word, using these catchy buzzwords like it doesn’t mean anything and many of them are very comfortable standing in the way of progress,” said Hill.
Now, writing for a political publication, Hill recognizes it’s difficult to separate sports from the larger society and that how athletes respond has as much to do with financial security as it does bravery.
“You can’t ignore the impact of the financial structure in the leagues, where you have so many guaranteed contracts in the NBA. You do not have that across the board in the NFL,” she said. “A lot of that has to do with how football is played and built. Football is a sport of conformity. Because it’s a conformity mindset, I think that bleeds into how the players think.”
Hill said football players don’t feel they have the luxury to speak out. “Given that many of them are at a financial disadvantage and the NFL careers tend to be much shorter ... we see that the health risks are enormous. They look at their time in the NFL as precious, and they don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize their career, even if it means standing up for themselves and their fellow player.”
Regarding the NBA, “Once they sign a contract, they know they’ve got the money. It’s a player’s league. One player can change the entire future and fortune of a franchise,” she said. “So players individually have much more power and I think individualism is more encouraged in the NBA because, stylistically, that’s how the game is played. I think that mindset is adopted by the player who don’t mind speaking up.”
Yet, she’s careful not to paint the NBA has morally superior to the NFL. “The NBA does not have a perfect track record. They also participated in blackballing a player too, Mahmoud AbdulRauf, who was protesting the national anthem,” she said. “However, I do think it helps that their best player, LeBron James, is as vocal as he is. That sets a tone for the rest of the players in the league.”
When it comes to speaking out, Hill has reached a point in her life and career where she no longer reacts to reactions.
“That’s why I named my podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered,” she said. “That really represents where I am in my life right now. I care and I’m passionate, but I’m not bothered by people’s opinions of me. I’m not seeking validation or approval.”