Retired NBA star and TNT commentator Charles Barkley on Saturday accused politicians of stoking racial division to “keep their grasp on money and power.”
The moment: “I think most white people and black people are great people. I really believe that in my heart,” Barkley said on-air while covering the NCAA Final Four men’s basketball tournament.
- “But I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power. They divide and conquer.”
- “We’re so stupid following our politicians,” he added.
Barkley, a famously outspoken NBA Hall of Famer, went on to expand his criticism beyond race.
- “‘We don’t live in their neighborhoods, we all got money, let’s make the whites and blacks not like each other,'” he said, speaking for the political class. “‘Let’s make rich people and poor people not like each other, let’s scramble the middle class.’ I truly believe that in my heart.”
In a July TV interview, Barkley criticized professional athletes’ activism following George Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody.
- “Instead of talking about racial equality, racial justice, and economic justice, we spend all our time worrying about who’s kneeling and not kneeling, what things are being said on buses, what’s being said on jerseys,” he said. “I think we’re missing the point.”
