Joy Reid Deserved Better. Every Black Woman Does [Op-Ed]
In Defense Of Joy Reid And Every Other Black Woman Who Has Been Scapegoated At Work [Op-Ed]

Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty
Joy Reid is one of the most high-profile Black women in American media today, and MSNBC not only took her off the air, but they removed her from the network.
It’s been framed as a part of a “restructuring of the network,” but when you look at the history of restructuring at MSNBC, where there is a Black woman in a prominent position at the network, you will find a Black woman on the chopping block.
There are many layers to this onion, and when you peel them all back, you still end up in the same place — racism and misogynoir.
America has a problem with Black women.
America has a problem with outspoken Black women.
America has a problem with outspoken Black women who don’t bend the knee to fascist regimes, and because these legacy media outlets are engaging in anticipatory obedience, there is no space for a Black woman like Joy Reid.
RELATED CONTENT: Trump Calls Joy Reid A ‘Mentally Obnoxious Racist’ Amid MSNBC Cancellation Of Her Show ‘The ReidOut’
She is the wild card that cannot be controlled in their eyes, and she is not the first. She likely won’t be the last.
MSNBC did this to an outspoken Black woman before
MSNBC has a problem with Black women, and more specifically, MSNBC has a problem with Black women who unapologetically speak truth to power. If the Black women in their employ aren’t going to bend the knee to in the same way the network is bending the knee to Trump, and if she won’t follow the sanitized script given to her, then that Black woman has to go — either by choice or by force.
They did this with Melissa Harris-Perry in 2016.
Harris-Perry, who is also a professor at Wake Forest University, hosted a popular weekend morning news show on MSNBC, and she used her platform to talk about the intersection of topics such as race, racism, social justice, politics, gender, history, and pop culture.
As the 2016 election season ramped up, MSNBC decided to focus heavily on the presidential election, often preempting Harris-Perry’s weekend shows in favor of coverage of the race for the presidency.
It all came to a head at the end of February 2016 when the network asked Harris-Perry to return to her show after being preempted for several weeks. Harris-Perry saw it for what it was and refused to return. She wrote an email to her coworkers explaining her reasoning for not appearing, saying, in part, that the decision to bring her back on the air was “being made solely to save face because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage.”
“… I am not willing to appear on air in order to quell concerns about the disappearance of our show and our voice,” she wrote.
Harris-Perry went on to say that her show “was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season,” and that she was silenced after “four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers.”
“Now,” she wrote, “MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.”
“The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by … MSNBC.”
MSNBC fired Harris-Perry after she sent the email.
When Harris was fired, NPR reported that MSNBC “shifted toward a newsier sensibility” and “rebranded itself the place for politics.”
It was another “restructuring.”

Writer/professor Melissa Harris-Perry speaks onstage during the Genius Talks sponsored by AT&T during the 2016 BET Experience on June 25, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Source: Jerod Harris/BET / Getty
The network wanted to lean heavily into political reporting, which meant there was no room for the topics Harris-Perry discussed.
Except race, racism, social justice, politics, gender, history, and pop culture are all political topics, but you may not see it that way if you are a white, male network lead who is wedded to the homogeneity of whiteness.
If you are a white, male network lead who is wedded to the homogeneity of whiteness, then you may only care about what other homogenous white people think, therefore creating a network meant to be viewed through one lens – a milky white one.
Phil Griffin, who was president of MSNBC at the time, told NPR that the network had “both feet planted in the 21st century, in the changing face of America and how things look” and that he was proud of what the network had done because “for several years,” they had been doing the right thing by letting Black people be on their network.
He said it in response to Harris-Perry’s statement that she was not “a token, mammy, or little brown bobblehead” to be used as a tool by MSNBC.
No offense to Phil Griffin, but you only brag about “several years” of doing the right thing when you know that it is outside of your normal business practices.
There are no participation trophies in white allyship. You don’t get to dislocate your shoulder patting yourselves on the back for the failed performance of being on the right side of history.
MSNBC fired Melissa Harris-Perry because she wouldn’t play the type of Black woman they wanted her to play on tv.
This is the context within which we have to view what happened with Joy Reid.
The abandoning and scapegoating of Joy Reid

Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty
America loves to micromanage Black women.
They pretend to want us in their spaces, but they want to police how we present when we get there.
They say they want our authentic selves, but they want to sanitize that authenticity and make it palatable for white people.
They want a sassy attitude and fiery comebacks. They are less interested in contextualized commentary and nuance.
They say they want the truth, but it can’t be the kind of heavy truth that holds whiteness accountable, calls out fascism, and calls Donald Trump by name.
Joy Reid speaks truth to power, and because she speaks truth to power, it makes her a target. If she is on Donald Trump’s radar, it makes MSNBC a target by proxy, and if MSNBC was about the real work of journalism and not anticipatory obedience, they would stand behind their star.
Everyone should be calling out Donald Trump.
RELATED CONTENT: Kamala, Oprah, Michelle: 21 Black Women We’d Prefer To See Serve As President

Source: Liliane Lathan / Getty
Of course, MSNBC is not going to admit that they are bending the knee.
CNN reports that MSNBC’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, wrote in a memo, “We now have one of the most engaged audiences in all of television and are seeing rapid growth across digital, audio, and more. In the years ahead, we must continue to show up for our audiences in this critical moment while simultaneously best positioning ourselves for the future.”
That’s a whole lot of words for whitewashing the network, but OK, Becky.
They are playing the restructuring game, and in this iteration of it, they take shows away from a Black woman and other people of color.
Except, the other people of color are still employed; they have just been shifted into other roles and are being used in other ways at the network.
Joy, however, is fired. They didn’t find another role for her.
From The Daily Beast:
Anchors Jonathan Capehart, Katie Phang, and Ayman Mohyeldin are losing their eponymous weekend shows. Capehart and Mohyeldin will instead be one of multiple hosts of separate editions of The Weekend at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively, while Phang will remain with the network as a legal correspondent with no anchor slot. Its other Miami-based anchor, José Díaz-Balart, will also lose his show, though he will remain as host of NBC’s weekend edition of Nightly News.
Psaki will replace Alex Wagner’s Tuesday through Friday 9 p.m. hour in April after Rachel Maddow completes her five-day-a-week stint during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler announced on Monday. Wagner will stay on as a senior political analyst.
Everyone but Joy still has a job.

Source: J. Countess / Getty
Meanwhile, Variety wants to talk numbers:
Reid has been a weekday mainstay at MSNBC since 2020, when she replaced veteran Chris Matthews. At the time, the assignment was seen as a critical one, assembling a crowd in the early evening that would stick around for MSNBC’s primetime schedule. Reid was known for offering unapologetically partisan views, but the audience for her program, “The ReidOut,” has been eroding. Overall “ReidOut” viewership was off 28% in February through the 20th compared to the year-earlier period, according to Nielsen data, while audiences between 25 and 54 had fallen 14%. While Reid’s show drew more viewers overall than CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront,” its time-slot rival, CNN had a bigger audience among the advertiser demo.
News viewership as a whole has been down since the election, and an additional mistrust of the media. Yahoo Finance reported in December that MSNBC in particular “faced backlash when Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, despite years of calling him a ‘fascist’” and that the network “spent months criticizing Trump but lacked urgency in its coverage of the election’s aftermath.”
If only there had been a Black woman sitting on television every single night calling out Donald Trump at every opportunity. Oh, wait. There was.
Joy Reid was right there.
Bringing ratings for “The ReidOut” into the discussion without context is egregious, especially when the context is all the networks have been suffering from lower viewership. Where are the numbers for the other shows on MSNBC?
Why is Joy expected to be the ratings saviour for the network?
You don’t get to take poor ratings and lay that at the feet of one Black woman when you have an entire network full of people who also contribute to said ratings.
The bar for Black women is in outer space. The bar for everyone else is buried somewhere under the floorboards.
If MSNBC doesn’t see the value in Joy Reid, they don’t deserve her.

Source: Valerie Terranova / Getty
And while this may be a hard pill for Joy to swallow right now, in the end, it’s going to work toward her greater good.
Legacy media is dying a death of a thousand bent knees, and it’s only going to get worse as we sink further into this idiocracy.
Black women are always going to be expected to excel whereas everyone else is allowed to fail. Black women are always going to be the first to be let go if it makes a way for the white faces to stay on the screen.
This is yet another example of performative allyship and DEI initiatives that are borne out of wanting to look “right” when you are white. It’s not so much about helping Black people — especially Black women — give voice to our stories and struggles in this country.
It’s about putting a happy Black face in front of the house of cards that is equity as presented by whiteness. As long as we are smiling, grinning, and performing the way they want us to perform, Black women will be all right.
The moment we choose to live in our truth, come as our whole selves, speak truth to power, and refuse to bend the knee, we become a threat, and they have to eliminate us.
This is what happened to Joy Reid.
She didn’t deserve it. None of us do.
This is the way America micromanages Black women. It’s their way or the highway, and there are so many of us out here on this road, it should no longer be a shock when another joins us on this path.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
It doesn’t make it right.
RELATED CONTENT: Joy Reid’s Show Cut In ‘Racist’ MSNBC Shakeup, X Explodes In Disbelief: ‘Joy Can Never Be Cancelled’
- Diddy’s Sex-Trafficking Trial Kicks Off: Defense Says ‘Baby Oil’ Isn’t A ‘Federal Crime’ As Hotel Security Takes the Stand
- Pastor Keion & Lady Shaunie Henderson’s Cry Out Con 2025 Delivers Soul, Spirit And Strength
- Why Actress Amber Iman Calls ‘Goddess’ A Love Letter To Black Women In Theater [Exclusive]
- 8 Types Of Sex Kinks: Number 4 And 8 Are Not For The Faint Of Heart
- From Basic To Bomb: 5 Ways To Elevate Your Sex Game This Summer