“The View” co-hosts defended a local news reporter on Monday who appears to have been fired for using a phrase popularized by Snoop Dogg.
Mississippi morning news anchor Barbie Bassett suddenly stopped appearing on the program or the station’s website after using the phrase, “Fo shizzle my nizzle,” during a March 8 broadcast in which the anchors discussed rapper Snoop Dogg. The phrase is a slang variant of “For sure, my [n-word]” or — as co-host Ana Navarro put it — “I concur with you wholeheartedly, my African-American brother.”
“People have to understand that sometimes stuff comes out of folks’ mouths and you might want to start with, ‘Hey, maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say,’ as opposed to, ‘You’re out,'” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said. “That’s just me, having been in this situation before,” she added, apparently alluding to her suspension from “The View” after claiming in Jan. 2022 that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin, who declined to say even the first half of the phrase on the air, said she had sung the lyric on multiple occasions in the past without being aware of its meaning. While allowing for the possibility of ignorance in the case of the phrase in question, Hostin still criticized Bassett for allegedly calling a black reporter’s grandmother her “grandmammy,” a term some consider offensive because it refers to a stereotypical caricature of an older black woman. (RELATED: ‘Y’all Gotta Stop This’: ‘The View’ Co-Hosts Criticize The Removal Of Offensive Words From Books)
“Now I’m thinking maybe she needs some sensitivity classes,” Hostin said.
“Maybe, but I don’t think firing her is going to help,” Goldberg interjected.
Co-host Sara Haines said the station should give Bassett a chance to address her use of the phrase on the air.
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said white people need to be aware of which racial words are “problematic” and “not for me to quote” when they listen to a song’s lyrics.
Goldberg continued to defend Bassett by saying a person should not be expected to know every word or phrase that could possibly be deemed offensive.
“The things that change — you can say this, but you can’t say that, but next week you might not be able to say this,” Goldberg said. “It’s hard to keep up. And if you’re a person of a certain age, there’s stuff that we do and we say … and also you have no idea until somebody says, ‘Oh by the way.’ You should know that just because we’re on television, wherever we are, whoever we’re talking about, just because we’re on television doesn’t mean we know everything. We don’t know everything you’re not supposed to do.”
“And if there’s something someone says, if you’re not going to give them the opportunity to explain why they said it, at least give them the grace of saying, ‘You know what? I’ve just been informed that I should not have done that,’ as opposed to, ‘You’re out,'” she continued.
In addition to the Holocaust controversy, Goldberg recently apologized after using the term “gypped” — a term some deem offensive to Romani people — during a discussion about former President Donald Trump.