ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith couldn’t understand why Dr. Umar Johnson, or anyone for that matter, would wish thousands of lashes upon him.
“I don’t know any human being alive I would wish 50,000 lashes on,” Smith said on the latest episode of the Know Mercy podcast. “Respectfully, how low can you go? Just because I said the man is in a still photo, you would say something like that about me?”
“Never met you, don’t know you,” he continued. “Educated brother, I wish you nothing but the best. But you would wish that upon another human being…a brother? Really? That’s how low you would go?”
His statement stems from Johnson’s appearance on the Breakfast Club last week in which he discussed a 1957 photo showing Jerry Jones standing among a group of white men who are denying Black students from desegregating North Little Rock High School in Arkansas.
Umar took issue with Smith saying Jones “didn’t deserve” to come under fire over the surfaced photo, arguing that if Jerry should be given a pass for something that occurred when he was 14 years old, why wasn’t that same courtesy given to a 14-year-old Emmett Till or 12-year-old Tamir Rice?
When Charlamagne tha God asked Johnson how many lashings Smith should receive, he responded, “Stephen A. is probably up to 150,000 lashes right now.”
Skip to the 42:15 mark to hear Dr. Umar’s remarks.
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