Weather Broadcaster Fired For Responding To Racist Comment Defends Her Actions On MSNBC
Rhonda Lee, a KTBS meteorologist, was recently let go after she responded on Facebook to a viewer’s comment about her looking like “a cancer patient” (Read Tommy Christopher‘s extensive report on the event here) due to her short hair. Lee responded by suggesting that the viewer should be more accepting of others’ appearances but said she appreciated his viewership. After her firing for this response, Lee joined MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts and host Melissa Harris-Perry to discuss the incident and the how the issue of hair care is a serious one to African-American women.
RELATED: KTBS-TV Meteorologist Rhonda Lee Fired For Responding To Racist Viewer Comment On Facebook
Roberts asked if Lee understood why she was fired. Lee replied that she said that her first instinct was to bring the viewer’s comment to the attention of management.
“I’m okay with not everybody liking me – that’s fine, but a lot of our comments as of late have come across more racist than anything, so I would like to help with getting a policy together so that we can, one, block offensive posts like this and, two, maybe start a good dialogue for educating people and getting a good discourse on the web,” Lee replied.
She said that her manager told her that “we got lucky this time” after Lee replied to the offensive comment. She said she was confused by her manager, and asked for a clarification. She said she was told that the next time she was confronted with an offensive comment, her only reply should be to “thank the viewer.”
Lee said that there is no written policy for responding to viewer comments and implied that her firing was arbitrary.
Harris-Perry said that she thought the topic of African-American women’s hair is a “fraught” area of discussion. She said that hair care for black women has often been a “tool for controlling African-American women’s self-presentation in all kinds of spaces, especially corporate spaces.”
Roberts noted that recently, a local anchor responded on air to a comment about her weight and was nearly universally applauded for her actions. Roberts asked why the reaction to her comment was so different. Lee replied that she was unaware why that seemed to be the case.
Watch the clip below via MSNBC:
