Charles Barkley Talked To Richard Spencer Because He Wants To ‘Know Who My Enemies Are’


Charles Barkley and the producers of American Race have already defended their decision to showcase Richard Spencer before the show even airs.

Previews of Barkley’s four-hour TNT documentary about race in America hit the internet over the weekend, highlighted by clip including the neo-Nazi celebrating white privilege that left Barkley temporarily speechless.

Barkley told Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitch that—while he didn’t like Spencer—he was “glad” to have him on American Race because of the perspective the white nationalist brought to light.

“I am glad we had him on the show because I want to know who my enemies are,” Barkley said. “I give him credit for having the balls and gumption to go on television and say his thing because there are a lot of people who think like him and we don’t even know they are around. I don’t like this dude, obviously, but he doesn’t hide behind it. There are so many people in America who think like him but we don’t know who they are.”


Barkley saying he has “balls” is one thing, but it was clear he wasn’t swayed by Spencer’s hopes for a “European empire” for his grandchildren to grow up in. It’s letting that kind of white power rhetoric onto cable television that got some upset by Barkley’s decision to showcase Spencer and the alt-right in the documentary.

Executive producer Dan Partland said Barkley and the crew “thought long and hard” about the decision to include Spencer, an alt-right leader who has a history of saying inflammatory, if not downright racist things. Eventually, they decided making people aware of his brand of racism was more important than potentially elevating his exposure to the mainstream.

“In the end, we were convinced that it was more important to shine a light. They say sunlight is a disinfectant. In the course of filming, we felt there was a lot of change in how the country viewed race and viewed groups like the alt right…The point that we started with the show was believing overt racism did not exist anymore and we needed to talk about systematic racism and subtle things on the margins that people are not always aware of. By the time we got to the end of filming, we felt we were not talking about the elephant in the room but about just racism. Richard Spencer provided an opportunity to expose that and to talk about what underlies all of those different issues.”

The series airs in full on Thursday and Friday, with an episode each night at 9 and 10 p.m. Barkley is hoping the documentary series continues a conversation about race in America, so I’m sure there will be plenty more things to talk about once the full documentary hits the airwaves.

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