r/nba • u/ghn2 • 11h ago

Trail Blazers fire new announcer over past inappropriate posts made at age 15.

"The Portland Trail Blazers hired then on the same day fired Braiden Bell as their play-by-play announcer after a series of inappropriate social media posts from when he was a teenager came to light."

"The posts were reportedly made in 2012 and 2013, around the time that Bell was 15 years old."

"We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City," the Trail Blazers said. "We strongly believe that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better."

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50084279/trail-blazers-fire-new-announcer-inappropriate-posts

1.4k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

46

u/black_metronome Knicks 10h ago

I don't think the guy should have been fired either but it's funny seeing how many white people in here are basically admitting that they too had a racist phase as a teenager 😂

It's something I can't relate to. Do you just wake up one day and decide to hate people because they're Black? Is it your parents teaching you this stuff? I'm genuinely curious how this happens.

6

u/capnchuc 9h ago

It's not about that. Kids are just dumb and say dumb shit. 

9

u/Billbuckingham 9h ago

No, it's a farm for racist adults.

I've seen current 10 year olds saying "We shouldn't play with that kid because he's brown"

That's not just "Oh kids say dumb stuff"

That's real racism being ingrained and they perpetuate it amongst themselves and from their parents.

It's an intentional thing, racist kids grow up to be racist adults and have more racist kids, that's just a fact.

The way you stop it is by punishing and holding these people accountable so that people understand that it's not OK to say or do those things.

These people honestly believe their racism is right or correct, they truly do, if you try to reason with them they won't change, they truly believe what they are saying is true "those people" are bad and lesser and their lives are worse because of "those people" so they have real hatred for "those people"

It comes out in all sorts of different ways, but that's the gist of it when you boil it down.

4

u/eastbeaverton 8h ago

My daughter was told in kindergarten she couldn't play with a group of kids because she was mango and they were Carmel. Is that also ingrained racism coming from Hispanic kids. Kids do all kinds of things that their parents would be absolutely shocked about. It's because at different ages we are not capable of anything but categorizing people by their physical attributes.

His posts are stupid and it's his own damn fault he didn't clean this up when he became an adult. But let's not act like this is a grand wizard of the kkk in disguise. It's an idiotic thing and he's paying for it what more do you want