This morning I woke up with something on my mind so I often write in the quiet hours before the family awakens. Recently, a television meteorologist named Jeremy Kappell lost his job for allegedly uttering a racial slur. Was this a slip of the tongue or a deliberate racial prank involving one of the nation's most important and historic figures, Dr. Martin Luther King? To be honest, I am struggling to understand why Jeremy would basically commit career suicide by deliberately saying a racial slur on television. Al Roker defended Kappell, and Dr. King's daughter Bernice has also questioned Kappell being fired. However, enough people were offended that we have to deal with this and not sweep it under the rug. To be crystal clear, the term at the center of the controversy is highly offensive and has been used by many racially-insensitive people or groups. I watched the video and have done enough broadcast work to know that verbal slip-ups happen. TV meteorologists, unlike other newscasters, are unscripted and ad-lib for a living. As we approach Dr. King's holiday, I reached out to Jeremy Kappell for a candid conversation about the controversy and race. I present his perspective for you to evaluate for yourself. I am not writing to change your viewpoint. However, as an African-American scientist within this field, I do see this as a teachable moment on race and an opportunity to highlight some very real issues.
You will have to decide for yourself what you believe, but either way, this event provides a teachable moment on the delicate intersection of race, media, and science. As a former president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), I know that the number of African American broadcast, research, and operational meteorologists hovers around 2%. That's an unacceptable number. There are institutionalized, cultural, and economic reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay. Additionally, there are known challenges with how African Americans are perceived within the scientific and broadcast meteorology communities.
As president of the AMS, the largest professional society in our field, I recall standing with colleagues in a conference hotel. We were all wearing suits, but I was asked by a patron if I was the airport shuttle driver. At another major conference in which I was invited to be the keynote speaker, I was asked 4 times if I was the hotel staff. To be clear, these are all admirable professions so don't miss my point. Much of my family has worked in the service industry for years.
Within the past year, I was racially harassed because someone disagreed with me about climate change. I opined on that experience at this link in Forbes. I have also written about African American broadcast meteorologist colleagues facing disparaging comments from viewers for wearing their hair in its natural styles. There are colleagues that alter their hairstyle or wear wigs to meet some imaginary standard of acceptability for viewers or newsrooms.
There are no "cards" being played here except the reality card. To put our heads in the sands and argue there are not challenges with race and the broadcast sector is naive. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that every situation has malicious intent. I am a firm believer that race-related issues like this must be confronted head on by all parties involved and learned from.
I asked Jeremy what can be learned from this incident. He told me,
I think the most important lesson to rise out of my circumstance is the one taught by the great Dr. King himself. Do not judge a man by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. While I wasn't judged by the color of my skin, I was judged by something just as superficial. A short clip of me bobbling my words on air. Without any other information about me, my life, family, my career, my past, my character... was immediately attacked by so little information. That's the lesson I see here. Let's not hurry to judge or condemn someone based on something floating around on social media that may be a complete mischaracterization of that person. This is no better than cyberbullying... and like cyberbullying it hurts. Lives can be ruined by these mischaracterizations and it must be stood up against.
