Jason Whitlock, an outspoken and controversial TV personality known for his takes on sports and black America, is no longer with Fox Sports.
Whitlock co-hosted “Speak for Yourself,” a sports debate show on FS1 the past four years alongside Marcellus Wiley. Whitlock’s contract expired Sunday and, by Monday, he was gone from the show.
“Friday was Jason Whitlock’s last day with FOX Sports,” the network said in a statement. “We thank Jason for all of his hard work and dedication to the network, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
Whitlock did not immediately respond to a text message from the Indianapolis Star and his usually active Twitter feed, with 325,000 followers, makes no mention of a job loss.
One of his most controversial takes came two years ago in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that concluded “Black people have no reason to fear political free agency.”
“I don’t really like politics much at all,” Whitlock said at the time, adding he is a non-voter. “If you just say, ‘I think Trump has a good idea here,’ you get kicked out of the black race.”
He went on to say that in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Democrats marketed liberalism as the solution to black people’s problems.
“And liberalism now is like a cigarette. It’s been marketed to us the same as the cigarette — fashionable, sophisticated,” he said. “It’s supposed to be liberating but I think it needs a surgeon general’s warning: Hazardous to your families and all the values you were taught as a child.”
Whitlock said 95 percent of African-Americans “are afraid to even admit that we have conservative values.” He is not.
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