What is “ignorance”?
Historian Michael Harriot slammed “Jeopardy!” contestants Friday over their apparent lack of knowledge regarding Black History.
Not inspired by a single incident, but a recollection of many erroneous “Jeopardy!” moments over time — Harriot took to Twitter to imagine a moment from the show where the host asked a contestant about a random piece of trivia and the player’s response.
“Jeopardy be like: Host: The 2nd Earl of Winchester wrote this 1887 symphony about the tributary to the 42nd-largest river in Obscuristan,” tweeted the historian. “Contestant: What is ‘Aksjducpïsudintal in A Minor?’ I’ll take History for $100.”
“Host: Name a Black person who did anything,” continued the tweet “Contestant: [silence]”
Since being posted, the now-viral tweet has been viewed nearly 958,000 times.
The Post reached out to “Jeopardy!” producers for comment.
Several Twitter users agreed with Harriot’s analysis of the situation.
“THEE. ACCURACY. I recall when FloJo came up in a category called ’80’s Ladies’,” commented one user. “Alas, even though they showed her photo and described her medal wins at the 1988 Olympics, none of the contestants could name her.”
“When I was a (white) kid, you couldn’t get [past] fourth grade without knowing who Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, & George Washington Carver were, at a minimum,” said another user. “Jackie Robinson was still famous, & Louis Armstrong. MLK Jr. in the news.”
One user commented that the thread was incredibly relevant “to the attacks on black history and why it is needed.” According to the user, the lack of knowledge on the subject is “indicative of how little black history is valued.”
“I chuckle as they bounce around the board as long as possible before they have to choose something from the Black category,” laughed a fourth person.
Harriott later returned to the thread and posted a video titled “Black Jeopardy Misses” detailing all the times a question related to black people has been missed.
Some commenters said that the accusation was untrue and labeled the tweet as pretty racist.
“I can think of many many questions I’ve heard that had answers like Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Fred Douglass, MLK, DuBois, Angelou, Owens, Baldwin, Marshall, Wheatley, etc. Go look it up,” said one user who claimed they watched the show for years.
One user attempted to claim that people appearing on the game show were told what to study in advance — a theory that has been debunked several times.
The syndicated television show has recently under fire after posing a Final Jeopardy question that all three contestants lost even though they provided the correct answer.
During the category called “The Quotable Alex” on Monday’s episode, host Mayim Bialik read the following clue: “An author and former prisoner: ‘Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.’ “
All three contestants guessed Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn but were rebuked by the judges due to the pronunciation of the last name.
“This is a tricky one to pronounce — looking for ‘Solzhenitsyn’,” Bialik, 47, said before pronouncing the name correctly.
The game show also came under fire for allegedly Jeopardy!” came under fire earlier this month over its “misleading” final clue that left all three contestants stumped.