On Rick Sanchez, Jon Stewart, and Why We All Lose Playing the Oppression Olympics
by Latoya Peterson
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was tired of being the butt of everyone’s joke.
He was done with hiding things. He was fed up with playing corporate games. So last Friday, Rick Sanchez went on Pete Dominick’s Sirius hosted XM radio show to get a lot of things off his chest.
Sanchez came out firing – and hit two targets, his own leg, and a few passerby.
His comments on the biased nature of news media were dead on until they veered into bigoted territory. His attacks on Jon Stewart, specifically about his ethnicity, veered fully into old antisemitic tropes. This led to Sanchez’s firing from CNN on the day the news broke.
The reactions around the media world are a mess, and unpacking the issues behind the situation becomes a wild ride through the dynamics of oppression, kyriarchy, professional passing, media conglomerates, and prejudice.
The Wrap has up a partial transcript of the interview (emphasis mine):
RS- It’s not just the right that does this. cause I’ve known a lot of elite Northeast establishment liberals that may not use this as a
business model but deep down when they look at a guy like me they look at a– they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier.
PD- Why do you say that? Give me an example – because you’re Cuban-American…
RS- I had a guy who works here at CNN who’s a top brass come to me and say, ‘You know what, I don’t want you to –
PD- ‘Will you wash this dish for me, Sanchez?’
RS- No no, see that’s the thing; it’s more subtle. White folks usually don’t see it. But we do – those of us who are minorities and women see it sometimes too from men in authority. Here, I’ll give you my example its this ‘You know what, I don’t want you anchoring anymore, I really don’t see you as an anchor, I see you more as a reporter, I see you more as a John Quinones – you know the guy on ABC. That’s what he told me. He told me he saw me as John Quinones. Now, did he not realize that he was telling me, ‘When I see you I think of Hispanic reporters’? Cause in his mind I can’t be an anchor. An anchor is what you give the high-profile white guys, you know. So he knocks me down to that and compares me to that and it happens all the time i think.
All true. I particularly like where Sanchez stops Dominick in his example to point out that racism isn’t always as overt as someone being compressed into an existing stereotype. Often, particularly in media, minorities face racism because they do not fit a certain mold. That’s something that always frustrates me when talking to well-meaning folks about racism. It’s very easy for them to identify really egregious examples – much harder for them to acknowledge some biases are quiet, yet devastating. After all, we aren’t hearing broadcasts from Ricardo León Sánchez de Reinaldo.
But now, let’s break down the rest of Sanchez’s comments:
RS – To a certain extent Jon Stewart and Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot.
PD- You think Jon Stewart is a bigot? Hold on now were going to get into it, Jon Stewart my old boss, my friend.
RS: Yeah I think he’s a bigot.
PD: How is he a bigot?
RS: I think he looks at the world through his mom who was a schoolteacher, and his dad who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything that you could ever imagine.
PD: What group is he bigoted towards?
RS: Everybody else who’s not like him. Look at his show! What does he surround himself with?
Now y’all know we have issues with both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
See these for background:
A Thin Line Between Stereotype and Satire: The Daily Show’s “Asian Correspondent” Olivia Munn
The Daily Show Introduces Us to Gitmo
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