Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on PBS: Supreme Court Has Moved Race Relations 'Backwards'

On the December 30 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar decried the state of America’s race relations as he claimed the country was “back sliding” in that area due to recent “Supreme Court decisions” and all the efforts to “suppress minority voters.”

Invited on to promote his new children’s book “Sasquatch in the Paint,” the former Los Angeles Laker center sounded like your typical liberal MSNBC host when asked by Rose for his take on how America was doing on the “racial front.”


The following exchange was aired on the December 30, 2013 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose:

CHARLIE ROSE: How do you think the country is doing on the racial front?

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: I think we’ve been doing some back sliding. You know what I’ve seen you know some of the Supreme Court decisions and all this effort to suppress-

ROSE: Having voting rights in the South.

JABBAR: -minority voters. I don’t get it. It seems like we’re moving backwards. But I guess we are just gonna have to keep up the fight.

— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.