White House Negress token black woman director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault was added as a last-minute addition to a Friday panel discussing police brutality at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in New Orleans.
Her announced appearance apparently created an uproar among black journalists attending the event. Page Six reports that Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist with the New York Times, was scheduled to moderate the panel that also was to feature Valerie Castile and Sandra Sterling, as well as Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker. However, both Hannah-Jones and Cobb dropped out of the panel, and Ed Gordon stepped up to fill in for Hannah-Jones as moderator.
Black journalists in attendance at the event took to Twitter to show what happened during Manigault’s appearance on the panel.
The Root’s own Jason Johnson and Terrell J. Starr were present for the shit show as well, and provided us with live video of the event.
Clearly, having Omarosa at this event was not the best idea NABJ could have come up with. Hopefully, it will do better with the guest list next year.