When ESPN’s SportsCenter cohost Jemele Hill ranted in a series of tweets about Trump being a white supremacist on Sept. 11, conservative fans of ESPN and Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for Hill to be fired. Trump himself declared via Twitter that “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming)” and demanded Hill “Apologize for untruth.” While ESPN has since denounced Hill’s tweets, the fight between politics and sports continues thanks to comments made by Trump at an Alabama rally on Sept. 22.
Hill’s comments represent the dilemma of black employees with social media accounts: How does one objectively do their job in the Trump era when their community is constantly being disrespected?