Whitlock: Spanked by Viv Stringer

Morehouse College, an HBCU in the ATL, hosted a Black Athlete forum. Spike Lee put it together and the panel was made up of Stephen A. Smith, Alge Crumpler, Alonzo Morning, Vivian Stringer, Etan Thomas, Jim Brown and more.

Ostensibly, the panel was to be a discussion on the lack of Negro sportswriters in the media. To address that, Morehouse has started a sports journalism program. But, the discussion covered a wide variety of topics.

One that grabbed the audience's attention was Vivian Stringer addressing Jason Whitlock. We all know about Whitlock's columns deriding Stringer and mitigating the words of Imus.

Stringer let him have it.

"I'm amazed," she said, staring down the length of the table at Whitlock. "I just want to understand your mind-set. I just want to understand people like you."

She went on:

"It wasn't the Rutgers women's basketball team that brought Mr. Imus down," she said, still glaring at Whitlock. "It was America. Women spoke. Black people spoke. It was America! I made a statement that it wasn't black or white. The truth of the matter is that we have been fooled for such a long time. We have such promise and we all are important. We need to step on each other's heads to get the little piece of the American dream. It became green. It was power. You [Whitlock] understand that. That's the reason why you chose these few minutes to get your one moment of [fame]. Because other than that, who knows Jason Whitlock?"

Pretty strong words.

We can't wait to see if Whitlock mentions the forum in his upcoming columns.