Where were KHTK’s ‘values’ when it had a radio voice standing up for Colin Kaepernick?
Long-time Sacramento Kings broadcaster Grant Napear tweeted words last week that have been used to undercut the civil rights group Black Lives Matter, an action and expression that drove his corporate bosses overseeing KHTK (1140 AM) to cut him loose. They said Napear’s banishment was about “values.”
Funny thing about “values.” They should not seem so convenient, applied as sentiments shift. Nor should we accept so easily all the public pronouncements from organizations that haven’t stood at the front of the line for racial justice before. Years before KHTK saw the light of values with Napear, its vision was clouded in how it worked with another radio personality.
Well before the Napear incident, KHTK dismissed Damien Barling, an African American voice trying to build a show with a diversity of perspectives and voices. He also supported former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s efforts to spotlight police brutality and ultimately paid the price of losing his gig.
“It became a race issue with the military and police being associated with white people and Kaepernick being associated with black people,” Barling said.
And how do we see it now?
Then Napear was one of the voices condemning Kaepernick’s respectful kneeling during the national anthem. Barling was one of the supporters. Barling’s values remain the same. His former employer, and the NFL, and its commissioner Roger Goodell seem to have changed.
Napear had a long run in Sacramento, 32 years as the TV voice of the Kings and 26 years as the top on-air personality at KHTK.
“While we appreciate Grant’s contributions to KHTK over the years,” his parent company said in a statement, “his recent comments about the Black Lives Matter movement do not reflect the views or values of Bonneville International Corporation.”
Last week, I laid out a case for why this could have been a redemptive teaching moment if Napear’s bosses had considered forgiving him if he apologized – something Napear wanted to do. They didn’t, he’s off the air. Napear critics have distorted my appeal for forgiveness with the notion that I whitewashed Napear’s mistakes, which I did not.
But the idea that Napear was dismissed from KHTK because his views did not reflect the views of his radio bosses is a curious one.
Getting sanctimonious about race, as many corporations are right now, is easy in light of worldwide uprisings triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police on May 25. Corporate America, among the biggest abusers of African Americans and other people of color, is falling over itself right now to assert that its “values” really aren’t racist at all.
This is an epic orgy of corporate butt-covering, exemplified by the Washington Redskins, the NFL team with the racist logo, tweeting it was down with justice.
Then there was Goodell last week. He said his league was “wrong” for “not listening” to players previously protesting police brutality without ever mentioning that the league blackballed Kaepernick for taking a knee during the playing of “TheStar Spangled Banner.”
Come on, now.
We’re not really talking about “values” at all, are we? Because if we were talking about values, the Redskins would drop their racist logo. Goodell would apologize to Kaepernick and an NFL team would give Kap a job he deserves but has been denied since he last played in 2016.
And the parent company at KHTK would acknowledge that getting rid of Napear did not suddenly restore its values. This is a station with one – one! – high profile African American on-air voice, former King Doug Christie. Christie is one of the few locally based African American voices on mainstream radio anywhere in Northern California.
And it did, at one time, have Barling behind the mic. His show in the 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. slot from 2016 to 2019 was dubbed “The Lo-Down.” Even though it featured other voices, such as broadcaster Ken Rudulph, Barling was a constant for the entire run.
“Let’s be different, that was our goal,” Barling told me by phone. “We tried to attract a younger audience.”
Barling spoke of how some sports talk shows fill the air with the sounds of Led Zeppelin, the Doors and other classic rock favored by older, whiter audiences. The audience Barling sought on KHTK would be familiar with and comfortable with hip-hop icons NWA and rapper Kendrick Lamar.
Barling, 39, is a Sacramento native and a graduate of El Camino Fundamental High School. He was convinced that sports talk radio could be different in his hometown. In other words, Barling was going to try to prove that local sports talk radio could succeed with an African American host who was not a former NBA star and who brought diverse sensibilities to a medium dominated by white hosts and white audiences
It sounds easy, right? It sounds like such a show would be a natural fit within the “values” of any radio company, right? Wouldn’t a radio company want to support a show like this to prove its values were deeper than a prepared statement composed during a PR crisis like the Napear incident?
For his part, Barling knew that he was swimming against the tide of every-day racism that plays out in a sports talk industry that talks a good game but is often little more than a microphone for how white guy hosts and white guy listeners view the sports world.
Barling said he didn’t care. “I will gladly fail at this thing for being who I am,” he said to me. “I would rather fail for being who I am than for who you want me to be.”
Sadly, those words were self-fulfilling. And as it turned out, Barling’s show was hurt and probably killed by the fallout from the explosive national story of Kaepernick kneeling on the sidelines as the 49er QB in the 2016 season.
Barling’s show was brand new in 2016 and he and his co-hosts had a choice of what to say about a high-profile African American athlete protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. The standard bearer at KHTK, Napear came out strongly and critically of Kaepernick on his show, which followed Barling’s.
Hmmm. Where were KHTK’s “values” then? But truthfully, it wasn’t just Napear who came out against Kaepernick.
There was an entire spectrum of Kaepernick opposition on sports talk radio. It ranged from specific criticism of Kaepernick for “disrespecting” the flag and the military during his protest to the more neutral voices which passively allowed predominantly angry white listeners to repeat the lie that Kaepernick was being disrespectful to American troops.
“It was constantly in the news.” Barling was in the minority. He had a different perspective on Kaepernick and he said he felt he has to share it on the air.
How did that go, I asked?
“Not well. A vocal part of the audience, a more conservative part of the audience that was older, were not pleased,” he said.
Listeners tossed the “stick to sports,” slur at him, which to my mind, is what white people say when they don’t want to hear what people of color have to say about race in sports.
“It was tough. It was really tough,” he said. “We were a new show but I don’t think we ever questioned if we were doing the right thing. We were trying to create a voice for people who didn’t have one...We didn’t force Kap into any conversations but we held our ground (when he did come up).”
Despite the negativity from listeners, Barling said he initially wasn’t worried. “People wanted to tell us to eff-off but I never thought the show was in jeopardy.” He said he would let even the harshest Kaepernick critics have their say, but he remembers one caller in particular who eventually gave himself and his motives away.
“He said, ‘If black people just obeyed the law,” Barling said. “At that point, I knew who I was dealing with.”
Barling recalls the show doing well with the coveted demographics of 18 to 34. But he said trouble related to Kaepernick found him.
In September of 2017, President Donald Trump spoke in Alabama, asking a cheering crowd this: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag to say, ‘get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired.’”
The day after Trump’s comments, Barling tweeted a photo of Kaepernick and his former teammate Eric Reid taking a knee during the anthem. In the tweet, Barling expressed solidarity with the two African American athletes taking a principled stand on the football field. He included emojis of five clenched fists, all with different skin colors, in the familiar “Black Power salute.” And the words: “I roll with these sons of bitches.”
Clearly, it was a rebuke of words Trump had directed at Kaepernick and Reid.
Unfortunately for Barling, he said potential advertisers noticed the tweet and it cost him two ads – one with a gym and one with a liquor company.
“They didn’t want to be associated with anyone controversial,” he said.
It was his tough luck taking a different course than most sports talk hosts. In 2019, his show was canceled. And again I ask: How did that fit the “values” of KHTK?
In light of Floyd’s killing, suddenly Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality is gaining traction. Sports talk radio is backpedaling. Like Muhammad Ali before him, Kaepernick appears to be on the trajectory of a hated-black-athlete-for-taking-a principled-stand to respected-black-athlete-suddenly-lionized-by-those-who-denigrated-him.
But that doesn’t change what happened Barling. It certainly doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of a radio station that did not support an African American host trying to go his own way.
Barling isn’t bitter. He has his own multimedia communications company and his podcasts. He is married to Kara Lawson, who won a WNBA Championship with the Sacramento Monarchs and is now a coach with the Boston Celtics of the NBA.
He’s moved on with his life.
But his experience tells a more accurate story about the “values” of Sacramento’s sports talk radio station and the mainstream culture of intolerance that was standard operating procedure before George Floyd’s death.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
