Marc Lamont Hill (The Huffington Post)
“BET News” host Marc Lamont Hill, known for his bold takes on race and social justice on various media programs, was named the host of a new entertainment talk show, VH1 Live and it has faced some criticism.
The series debuted last month and has been questioned for its choice of Hill, who has shown his chops for hard news and political topics. But the activist welcomed the chance to do something fun and is putting down claims that the show is too low-brow.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, a company Hill once worked for, the Morehouse professor takes issue with the term “ratchet,” saying it is “an elitist and classist word and often it is undercut by other things around race.”
“I think there’s space to talk about the lives of everyday people,” he explained. “I think there’s space to talk about people who don’t sip tea with their pinky up, who don’t speak the king’s English to the queen’s taste.”
Hill maintains there is space for people who want to watch entertaining TV, but that doesn’t mean the talk show supports “irresponsible representation.”
Hill said his time working at CNN, Fox News and HuffPost all groomed him for a career in TV hosting. He believes there is room to “make a show where we can talk about issues, but talk about the fun stuff.” Though he admitted we would be invested in watching “Love and Hip-Hop: Atlanta” regardless of his hosting gig, the political commentator pointed out the show still brings in issues of race and culture.
While talking to Naturi Naughton from “Power” and Jackie Christie from “Basketball Wives: L.A.” the group discussed the WNBA protest, where several teams would not discuss sports but were open to talking about issues of racial injustice stemming from the killings of Black men by police.
