“In order to take ownership of the issue, not only must there be a baseline of honest, and open communication, that allows employees to be heard, but also definitive, measurable action taken to foster that environment.” ~ Brielle Pray, Sapient Insights Group

This past summer, media outlets exposed a conversation with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols’ and Adam Mendelsohn. This leaked conversation serves as a case study on the interplay of race, gender, and power structures. Rachel Nichols was unknowingly being recorded in her hotel room commenting that her colleague, Maria Taylor, received a prime assignment as a “diversity play.”

In the months since The New York Times detailed the conversation, it has been easy to focus discussions and analysis on the behaviors of Nichols or Maria Taylor because of their visibility. Still, as far as the public knows, there have been no repercussions for those in leadership who made the underlying decisions that exacerbated the issue. Who made the initial decision to replace Nichols with Taylor? Who decided to cover up the recording once they were made aware? Who decided to take substantive action only when the comments were made public? Where are these leaders in the discussion and analysis of wrongdoing?

The coverage to date has focused on:

• Solid criticism of ESPN’s decision to promote Taylor at the expense of Nichols’ contract.
• Nichols’ ill-advised conversation with Adam Mendelsohn, a political and communication strategist and also an advisor to LeBron James¹.
• The reprimand of Kayla Johnson, the Digital Social/Video Producer for sharing the tape with Maria Taylor. Johnson was placed on two weeks unpaid leave and given less honorable jobs after disclosing her actions to Human Resources.
• Maria Taylor’s request that Nichols be removed from the NBA Finals and ESPN’s response: not requiring Taylor and Nichols to shoot together live, but editing their sequences to appear as if they did.

What has been lacking from the coverage is:

• Did the ESPN executives behind this series of poor decisions (aka anyone other than Kayla Johnson) experience repercussions?
• Has anyone, other than Nichols, learned something?
• Is ESPN a better workplace for women and BIPOC employees in the aftermath?
• How would the leaders at ESPN handle it differently today?

The root of the issue lies in how ESPN and sports as a whole have been historically exclusionary of women, specifically Black women and other marginalized groups. The Associated Press Sports Editors collected data on these disparities and published them in the 2021 Sports Media Race and Gender Report Card 2021. Evaluating over 100 newspapers and websites from 2018 to the present, showed that in the United States and Canada, 77.1% of the sports reporters were white; 85.6% were men.² They gave racial hiring a rating of B+ but gender hiring a rating of F, by using the federal affirmative action policy’s measure of equity; that “the workplace should reflect the percentage of people in the racial group of the population.” This revealed that in the entirety of sports media, less than 25% of those hired were women. Using this data, it becomes clear that ESPN and sports media companies across the board do not create space for women in this field.

At first glance, it’s easy to critique Nichols, as she is deserving of criticism for her comments directed towards Taylor. However, while considering the limited availability of positions for women in sports, it can be more broadly understood that Nichols’ frustration and feelings of displacement by ESPN are warranted and stems from her positionality as a gendered minority. However, how can we also consider the impact not only of her words but ESPN’s actions as displacing Taylor and creating a harmful work environment for her as well? In effect, how can we view this incident intersectionally?

Giving the role of NBA Final sideline reporter to Taylor, and disregarding Nichols’ contract, was the initial oversight of ESPN that spurred Nichols’ discriminatory, albeit, honest sentiment. Nichols is quoted saying, “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my things away.”³ Nichols reaction is another example of white women’s lack of empathy to the additional issues faced by Black women and the added pressures and struggles they encounter in the field.

I had hoped Nichols, or any woman in her position, would have responded with gratitude for Taylor’s presence in the network, as it creates more room for women in the company. But, there is tension when feeling your position as a woman is being targeted. The situation is further complicated when we consider the historical betrayal of Black women by white women. Nichols’ sentiments lend themselves to a sense of entitlement about losing her contracted role. Add in the layer of Nichols’ having this private admission shared publicly, and it becomes an issue in the center of fraught race and gender relations.

In the introduction to her book, Co-Whites: How and Why White Women “Betrayed” the Struggle for Racial Equality in the United States, professor in African-American Studies at Ohio Wesleyan University, Emeka Aniagolu writes in her thesis that “White women in the United States have employed three principal means to transform themselves into ‘co-whites’ or ‘co-partners’ with White men in the governance of the racial status quo of power and privilege in the United States, rather than to transform the racial status quo in favor of racial equality for all.”⁴(xiv). In the Chapter, “White Women and Affirmative Action” Aniagolu invokes “scarcity theory” to describe white fear of Black competition. Author Benjamin Quarles wrote that the competition for resources and jobs could be felt as far back as the 1950s in the North, mainly for fear that jobs occupied by white people would be assumed by Black laborers instead. Aniagolu continues by stating that within the “context of the asymmetrical allocation of perceived scarce resources in a money-managed capitalist system, White men possess disproportionate political and economic power… it will be him that the White woman, seeking economic resources and security, would turn as collaborator, ally, partner, patron and benefactor.”⁴ (123).

We can consider that Nichols admitted the impact of her words superseded her intent when saying, “My own intentions in that conversation, and the opinion of those in charge at ESPN, are not the sum of what matters here — if Maria felt the conversation was upsetting, then it was, and I was the cause of that for her.”¹ However, the hierarchical structure that Aniagolu writes on, is echoed in the situation with Nichols. Although Nichols recognizes that the intentions of her words were not malicious nor meant to be heard by the public, she still participates in a historical narrative: that white women seek to uphold white patriarchal dominance, and fear displacement of their own positions by Black people more generally, and in the sports media industry specifically. The only caveat that must be reiterated is that Taylor was appointed to the NBA Finals sideline reporter position, in violation of Nichols’ contract. This sentiment is a critique of Nichols’ reaction to this displacement, not of any official action taken within the company. It’s also apparent that Nichols was one of the only actors in this situation that apologized and admitted part in the situation. Contrarily, we do not see this attempt at correction from ESPN, neither from their president Jimmy Pitaro nor any other leadership or executive team members.

So how can marginalized communities move up in a system that wasn’t created for them? The starting point, in this case, can be asking, what would ESPN have done with the recording if it had not been ‘leaked’? We know what Kayla Johnson chose to do, but we aren’t sure how the company would have reacted had the video not been shared publicly. Evidenced by their responses to the actual event, it’s unclear if this would have been brought to light at all, or once again swept under the rug. If employees, such as Johnson, cannot trust the systems in place to care for women and Black women specifically, how can we blame her for sending that information to Taylor and allowing the story to be publicized, given she is not the sole reason this information was “leaked” to the public? The conversation then demonstrates how power structures perpetuate themselves and seek to punish anyone, especially members of marginalized communities in terms of race, gender, and stature within the company when it is called out.

The intricate web of ESPN’s hypocrisy will take time to unravel and address; it’s complex past and present compels us to evaluate how we can learn from their missteps and the harm those in power have collectively caused, along with Nichols (although she has been targeted in her own way).

To take ownership of the issue, there must be a baseline of honest and open communication that allows employees to be heard, as well as a definitive, measurable action taken to foster that environment. Moving forward requires transparency about where we as individuals or a company itself can confront its own issues, accept them, and make appropriate adjustments, especially those in leadership. It’s a messy, layered process that requires confronting our own identities and their formations and changing systemic and structural inequities.

For more on this topic, check out The HR Huddle podcast, where Senior Partner Pam Jeffords and Managing Partner Kim Seals of Sapient Insight Groups explore ESPN’s inadequate HR practices with Ball Corp’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Charles “CJ” Johnson. The hosts investigate the themes of intent vs. impact, expectations vs. emotions, and individual choice vs. company hierarchy.
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[1] Draper, Kevin. “A Disparaging Video Prompts Explosive Fallout with ESPN.” The New York Times, 2021, Accessed 26 Sept. 2021
[2] Lapchick, Richard E. Edited by Daniel Bowman et al., DeVos Sports Business MBA/MSBM, 2021, THE 2021 SPORTS MEDIA RACIAL AND GENDER REPORT CARD: ASSOCIATED PRESS SPORTS EDITORS, Accessed 26 Sept. 2021.
[3] “Rachel Nichols Speaking on Maria Taylor *Full Video*.” YouTube, 4 July 2021, Accessed 10 Oct. 2021.
[4] Aniagolu, Emeka. “Introduction”. “Co-Whites: How and Why White Women “Betrayed” the Struggle for Racial Equality in the United States” (2011). Pages xiii-xv.