After 13 years with sports talker WJFK-FM (106.7 the Fan) in Washington, DC, Chad Dukes has been let go. Entercom’s reason for the firing was “racist and other inappropriate comments” made on his podcast.
Dukes hosts “The Big O and Dukes,” with Oscar Santana and Drab T-Shirt. While the company was not specific about which podcast or what comments got Dukes fired, The Washingtonian speculated that it was comments Dukes made on the September 14 episode when discussing how the NFL had been dealing with racial-justice protests.
Dukes: “There are real, legitimate concerns that people have that have nothing to do with the fact that they’re against people with bad skin tone. There’s personal accountability issues, there’s family structure issues, there’s the fact that communities with more violence and crime need to be policed more so they have higher interactions with police officers—none of that can be spoken about. It’s “this person killed this person and now we burn down the city.” And there’s a lot of people that are smart enough to realize that there’s a more nuanced conversation, but they’re not allowed to talk about it. So what you’re talking about is, you’re like, “this is great, we’re having a conversation.” No we’re not. We’re continuing to allow one group to speak and silencing the other one and castigating them.”
Entercom Washington DC Market Manager Ivy Savoy-Smith issued the following statement about the firing: “We terminated Chad Dukes’ employment after we recently learned of racist and other inappropriate comments he made in past episodes of his personal podcast. We have zero tolerance for this type of speech from any of our employees, on our platforms or otherwise. Our air talent are ambassadors of our brand, and we do not want to be affiliated with these comments.”
I gotta agree with Leroy and Gerald. I stopped listening to his show because he was very disrespectful. He’d belittle callers to his show, and call them idiots etc. HELLO – THESE PEOPLE ARE WHY YOU HAVE A SHOW !!!! I never called in to show, but wrote to the station because that’s how bad it was. I guess he wasn’t as smart as he thought. Didn’t he think people would find out what he said in the era of social media ? Pretty idioitic huh Chad ?
I met Chad Dukes in 2007 when he was on-the-air in Phoenix and he remains one of the biggest pricks I’ve ever met in my life. I don’t know what he said, but this firing couldn’t have happened to a better person. Hope he enjoys doing traffic reports in Paducah for the rest of his career.
Well I’m not certain that he use any true racist remarks he is an idiot. He is angry, jealous, hateful and thinks he is smarter than everyone . Yet he still can’t pronounce cerebral and nucleus correctly. But yet he uses every conceivable word in every sentence to show that he’s smarter than everyone. now he does use them in the correct context but there’s not any need for that. and he hangs up on people when they don’t agree with him. He’s two-faced. he hates lurch and JP as was evident by that tirade a couple years ago. These are the guys that he in turn for and gave him a start. Pretty ungrateful. His narcissistic angry ways finally caught up to him. Good riddance and a job well done intercom, sad that it took you so long to see the light.
I hope Mr. Hooks and his “unacceptable” views hooks on with a platform that is not as beholden to the Social Justice approved one. If the gentleman knows sports, and can engage listeners, Barstool or Outkick could use him.
Everything he said was true and there’s not a racist thing about it. Now, even if you don’t agree with that (which is fine), you have a right to that opinion. And Dukes had a right to say what he said. He used no racial epithets, he did not use degrading language. He provided a simple analysis of the situation as he sees it. This trend toward censorship is incredibly dangerous and fascistic.
This is total crap and I hope Entercom gets their butts handed to them in a lawsuit for wrongful termination.
He literally said that people ‘of less desirable skin tone’ referring to people of color.
Good for Entercom! No employer should ever tolerate racist behavior from its own employees. It takes courage to do the right thing. Its not censorship, it’s living their values and holding people accountable. Censorship is when the government prohibits people from speaking truths. Private enterprises who have a brand to protect and a commercial business to run have every right to hold their employees to a specific standard of behavior. Hate speech is NEVER okay.
Censorship plan and simple.