Charles Barkley Will Have his Own Show on America's Racial Divide
On the list of words that describe Charles Barkley, outspoken might be at the top. He’s spoken out on race issues in the past – with mixed results – but TNT is now giving him his own show to explore the topic.
Barkley will host his own show called “The Race Card” this fall. Here’s how TNT describes the show, in part:
“NBA legend and Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley has had enough. The America that he knew has lost its way, becoming mired in partisan politics, social divides and entrenched corporate interests. Now he hopes to get to the root of the problem in the new limited-run series The Race Card. TNT has ordered six hour-long episodes of the show, with plans to launch in early 2017.
In The Race Card, Charles Barkley wants to bust up the echo chamber mentality that so often has people retreating to corners of the like-minded, where views are reinforced and ideas are distorted into angry, unexamined groupthink conclusions. Each week, Barkley will take on the rapidly calcifying positions around today’s hot-button topics. He will seek out the sharpest and most varied viewpoints from today’s cultural leaders and tastemakers. He will then challenge and probe those ideas, even trying them out on himself.
No idea presented on The Race Card will be left in the abstract. Barkley will put ideas on their feet, with real-world proof-of-concept tests that will engage people and expose the truth behind their closely held beliefs. In the end, Barkley will reach his own conclusions guided only by his own wits and common-sense wisdom.”
Barkley is certainly a better person to take on the topic than, say, Skip Bayless or Jason Whitlock, but will his well-observed stubbornness get in the way? He’s closed his mind to analytics and knowing how to pronounce most players’ names, but he’s charming, likable, and smarter than people give him credit for. It’s a kind of high risk-high reward effort by TNT, and if it goes poorly, we’ll all know very quickly.