I talked to Kings announcer Grant Napear, put on leave over BLM tweet. Here’s what he said
Grant Napear, TV voice of the Sacramento Kings and co-host of a popular spots talk radio show on KHTK, has been placed on administrative leave by the station and its parent company.
Substitute host Jason Ross announced on Napear’s show that the station is going to investigate a Twitter dispute that Napear had with some famous ex-Kings players on Sunday evening.
How long Napear will be on leave from his radio show, and whether the dispute will affect Napear’s role as the long-time TV voice of the Kings, is unclear.
But as our city was being looted on Sunday night, and as my colleagues were being attacked while covering the violence spawned by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, a Twitter confrontation ensued between Napear and DeMarcus Cousins. It was joined by Matt Barnes, Chris Webber and hundreds of bystanders.
Cousins tweeted that he wanted to know what Napear thought about Black Lives Matter. Cousins is African American. Napear is white. And BLM is a movement that has arisen because of police brutality across America.
“Black Lives Matter” is a sincere exhortation that means what it says: Black Lives Matter. The phrase has been shouted on Sacramento streets for days to protest the killing of Floyd by a white police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck, completely indifferent to Floyd’s pleadings that he couldn’t breathe.
In Sacramento, people shouted “Black Lives Matter” after the killing of an unarmed Stephon Clark. And after the killing of an unarmed Mikel McIntyre. And after the killing of Joseph Mann. Black men killed by police is just too long to list.
Napear responded to Cousins in a tweet, which Napear should not have done. He made the mistake of being cavalier: “Hey!!! How are you? Thought you’d forgot about me. Haven’t heard of you in years.”
But it was the final line of the tweet that made him the target of hundreds of critics: “ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!”
Boom.
Napear had unwittingly tweeted the inflammatory words. He repeated a phrase that has been used to invalidate the message of BLM by a whole host of people, almost entirely white.
The loaded phrase ‘all lives matter’
These BLM critics include law enforcement groups such as Blue Lives Matter. Over the weekend, police in Cincinnati saw fit to raise the Blue Lives Matter flag, which some rightly took as a direct repudiation of BLM.
I’ve stopped trying to argue with people who either hate BLM or consider it a terrorist group. They are not. As the Floyd case proves again – and we should be beyond needing any more proof – police brutality has resulted in the deaths of too many black men.
Implicit bias within police departments results in little kids getting beat up for no reason, as we saw in Rancho Cordova recently. In these cases and so many more, we are left to deduce that law enforcement responds differently to people of color. We are left to deduce that people of color are more likely to get killed, get a beat down or suffer indignity in confrontations with law enforcement than white people.
Those who deny this are part of the problem. Sometimes those who deny it do so with the phrase: “All Lives Matter.” That phrase is politically fraught and a flash point, as we saw when Napear’s tweet blew up.
I spoke with Napear on Monday morning and he apologized as he has done on Twitter.
“I’m not as educated on BLM as I thought I was,” Napear said to me. “I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across.”
Napear apologizes
Napear was emotional on the phone and was sincere. And I believe that he didn’t know the political implications of the phrase he used.
“I’m in pain,” he said. “I’m 60 years old and I still have a lot learn.”
He asked me for my advice and I gave it. I said there is nothing wrong with saying you’re sorry, showing humility, directly stating that you didn’t understand the controversial nature of the phrase used.
Here is my thing: I have no idea what kind of personal history Napear has with Cousins, Webber and Barnes. That’s between them.
I have seen people lose their jobs in media over situations such as these, such as my old friend Larry Krueger, a Sacramento State graduate and Bay Area sports radio personality, who has bounced back with his current KNBR radio gig. I have seen people destroyed over a single mistake. Can’t we take a breath, for a moment?
Have we lost the capacity to forgive?
Clearly, Napear should have ignored Cousins
But if his apology on the radio is as sincere as the one he shared with me, I support forgiveness. Our community is hurting right now and this Twitter fight is emblematic of our divisions and our pain. Why not embrace reconciliation?
I support BLM. I support BLM in Sacramento. I support real reform within police departments because our communities are hurting due to the plague of police brutality.
But beyond that, as a resident of Sacramento, I want our community to heal. I want to leave a door open for people’s views to evolve and change.
I’ve experienced that in my own workplace where we once had divisions based on race and ethnicity. Some of my co-workers and I have come a long way in 30 years and I have had my life enhanced by forgiving people and having them forgive me.
This issue with Napear is a test for all of us: Can we forgive and can we be bighearted enough to put down our hostilities and understand why there is so much pain in our community?
I think he made a mistake and he knows it. We all make mistakes. I hope forgiveness keeps him on the air. I hope for widespread acknowledgment for the real pain tearing at our community.
The only path away from the pain of division is reconciliation.
This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 1:51 PM.
