Dr. Umar Ifatunde, more popularly known as Dr. Umar Johnson has added his two cents to the Kyrie Irving conversation. The “Prince of Pan-Afrikanism” made a video giving virtual lashes to a bevy of prominent sports commentators for what he perceives as their lack of support for Irving since his suspension for posting a link to a reported anti-Semitic documentary.
“Richard Jefferson, I sentence you to 500 lashes for conduct unbecoming a Black man. Stephen A. Smith, I sentence you to 4,000 lashes for conduct unbecoming a Black man. Chris Broussard, Rob Parker, I sentence you both to 2500 lashes for conduct unbecoming a Black man.”
Ifatunde mimicked a whipping after each name and sentence was mentioned and went extra hard when discussing ESPN’s Michael Wilbon and FOX Sports’ Shannon Sharpe, who he felt extra spicy about.
“Michael Wilbon, you fat baldhead no neck midget, I sentence you to 3000 lashes for conduct unbecoming a Black man,” Ifatunde continued. “Snow bunny Shannon Sharpe, you’re the biggest and strongest of everybody on the list, so I’m going to have to sentence you for 10,000 lashes for conduct unbecoming a Black man and saying that no Black woman can make you happy; 10,000 lashes for Shannon Sharpe. Who else we got on this list.”
Dr. Umar is now the most vocal in a growing congregation of people who feel that Irving is the victim of a false narrative by people who look like him. Irving shared a link to the documentary “Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” The 2018 film claims that Jewish people are lying about their origins and asserts that the Holocaust never happened.
Dr. Umar Johnson is a doctor of clinical psychology and certified school psychologist who considers himself an expert on the education and mental health of “Afrikan and Afrikan-American children,” according to his website. Umar claims to be a “paternal kinsman” to both Frederick Douglass and the late Bishop Alexander Wayman (1821-1895), the 7th Bishop of the AME Church.
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Umar became a popularized trope of the Hotep man, a subculture of African-Americans who use Ancient Egypt as a source of Black pride and are incredibly Afrocentrist. Umar gained many skeptics after launching a popular fundraising campaign for his school, The Frederick Douglass & Marcus Garvey RBG International Leadership Academy for Boys. The school has never been opened, and Umar has kept quiet about where the school is actually located.
Still, Umar joins a growing contingent of famous Black athletes and entertainers who are opposed to the way the Brooklyn Nets and the NBA have handled the Kyrie Irving situation.
“There is an interesting distinction between what somebody says verbally and what somebody posts as a link on a platform with no description behind it,” said Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown, who is also a vice president of the National Basketball Players Association.
“Some people will argue there’s no difference and some people will argue there is a difference. There’s no language in our CBA. There’s no rules against it. This is uncharted territory for everybody, and everybody is trying to figure out the difference between the two.”
The culture has also been analyzing its top sports commentators, and now Dr. Umar is the most vocal in an ever-growing room of culture critics.
