Black women are truth sayers

And prominent ones are paying the price.

By Shalise Manza Young

About a year ago, I came across a quote on social media: Black women aren’t soothsayers, they’re truth sayers.

I wish I could remember where I saw it and give proper credit. Though the source is lost, the word have stuck with me because they are true. It’s also similar to something I’ve said to friends more than once in recent years: No one sees this country with more clarity than Black women.

For centuries, there has been a sustained effort to keep us subjugated at worst, and on the margins at best. If there has been any positive to enduring those acts, it’s that all that time shoved into the background offered nothing but opportunity: to observe and listen, to understand exactly how America operates, and to see just how fraudulent so many of the supposed “superior” really are.

That power, gained over the generations, is why far too often Black women who are provided platforms to offer commentary speak truth to power so forcefully that it isn’t long before that platform is stripped away.

The most recent example came last weekend, when news came that MSNBC was abruptly ending “The ReidOut,” the nightly program anchored by Joy-Ann Reid since 2020, when she became the first Black woman to host a primetime cable news show. She had been with the network since 2014.

Reid was perhaps the fiercest critic of President Donald Trump in corporate media, offering unflinching discourse on the never-ending stream of lies, misinformation and disinformation that has come not just from Trump but those who are thrilled to parrot his pablum in service to him and, by extension, their own bank accounts. Reid reported on issues of civil rights, shed light on injustice, discussed our fraying democracy, and conveyed information on difficult topics in a way that made them easier to understand.

Given the embarrassing knee-bending we’ve already seen from corporate media since the start of the year—ABC settled with Trump for millions rather than fight the absurd lawsuit he filed against it, and CBS has agreed to mediation in a similarly absurd lawsuit, it’s not hard to think jettisoning Reid is a kind of pre-capitulation from MSNBC. It was easier to dismiss her now, before Trump again ratcheted up the invective against her and threatened the network, not just because of her critiques of him but also because she represents the slur du jour: DEI.

(If it’s not clear yet, roughly 99 percent of the time the right uses “DEI” these days, it’s done as a stand-in for Black. Ok, maybe 97 percent of the time.)

It might not stop with Reid, however. Political commentator Angela Rye, hosting a YouTube live on Tuesday with fans of the “Native Land Pod” she co-hosts, offered a sobering response when asked if Reid was fired “as a part of DEI reform.”

“I'm going to tell you this: Nobody Black on mainstream television right now is safe,” Rye said. “I think a lot of people are making concessions to Donald Trump and his policies, trying to ensure that they don't get fined because he’s essentially the new [Federal Communications Commission] chairman. …He’s going to make sure that there’s nobody that’s criticizing him on air.

“Joy Reid was one of his biggest threats. How do I know that? Because as soon as he learned that Joy was no longer at MSNBC, his response was ‘finally.’”

We’ve seen over and over how Trump reacts to even the slightest bit of pushback from reporters. But, to borrow his own word, he is at his nastiest when that pushback comes from a Black woman. He’s used his bully pulpit to personally attack journalists Reid, Abby Phillip, Yamiche Alcindor, Nikole Hannah-Jones, April Ryan, and Jemele Hill, all of whom were either doing their job by asking questions or said things Trump didn’t like.

Reid was in a high-profile slot at MSNBC, and she was never going to wilt under outside pressure to comply. Joining a Sunday night Zoom for the “Win with Black Women” advocacy group, she was steadfast, saying she had no regrets about “going hard at” Trump; on Monday night, she spent her final show offering a guide on how to resist in these unprecedented times, as Trump allows Elon Musk to seize control of much of the federal government and more and more Republican lawmakers opt to leave their spines at the doors of the Capitol.

But while Reid’s ouster may have been an attempt to appease Trump, MSNBC has a particularly troubling track record when it comes to Black women. In 2016, it had a public split from weekend anchor Melissa Harris-Perry. Harris-Perry took pride in discussing intersections of culture, community and politics in the Black community during her program, but she felt the show was taken from her in the run-up to that year’s election, and disagreements with MSNBC brass led to its cancellation.

In 2022, the network abruptly cut ties with Tiffany Cross, host of the highly rated weekend show “Cross Connection.” Cross said last year that she wasn’t given an official reason for her ouster, but that every week was a “battle” to get to cover the issues she most wanted to highlight, and believes that once she began drawing the “ire of white conservatives,” particularly on Fox, it gave MSNBC justification to let her go. Speaking from experience, I know that when the worst people get upset at your work it’s because you’re holding up a metaphorical mirror and they don’t like what they see.

There is a reason why 94 percent of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 93 percent voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and about 90 for Kamala Harris in 2024: We know what’s up. We have that clarity. But on the rare occasion one of us is allowed the opportunity, our truth-telling is treated as treachery.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

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