Skip Bayless 'Battered By White Guilt' After Watching 'Sinners'

Skip Bayless might be three months late to the party, but he's delivered an interesting interpretation of the movie Sinners.

On Friday (July 4), the sports commentator released a new episode of The Skip Bayless Show, in which he explained why he "loved and hated" the Ryan Coogler-directed horror film.

Bayless claimed that the movie made him feel "bludgeoned and battered by white guilt," while some of his viewers thought he misinterpreted the film entirely. He added that star Michael B. Jordan had "raw screen power" and that he appreciated the film's "melding of two very different genres."

"Trust me, Ryan Cougler's screenplay just, so to speak, sucks you in," Bayless continued. "Not once did I think this is silly or this is hokey didn't have time to doubt it because Sinners just grabs you by the – well – by the throat that will probably get bitten."

But by the film's end, Bayless said he felt overpowered by "white guilt." "Look, Sinners has no use for white people nor should it," he said. "The prevailing metaphor, of course, is that evil devious white people tricked Black people and sucked their blood and turned them into something they weren't meant to be."

This led to Bayless saying that he's "fought racial injustice" for decades and was "mostly raised by a Black woman" who was more present than his biological mother. The woman, Katie Bell Henderson, worked for his grandmother, although he said his relative didn't have a "plantation mentality."

Bayless continued to draw parallels between Henderson and Sinners protagonists Smoke and Stack, as all had briefly lived in Chicago. "My soul aches when I have to watch what white people did to Black people in
the Deep South in the 1930s," he continued. "I know all about it. Obviously, I
can't fix it and after a while it's just hard to watch."

Bayless continued with feeling "deeply guilty" when watching the film, which he added "beat" him over the head. "After a while, I just wasn't sure I could take much more of it as great as it was."

But while Bayless might've felt targeted by the film, Coogler has addressed that the film is for Black and white viewers, both of which have helped Sinners have record-breaking box office success.