While commenting on hockey icon Don Cherry's firing from Sportsnet, CTV's The Social co-host Jess Allen upset a lot of people with her own remarks she made about hockey players. She's now attempting to clarify those comments, although it remains to be seen whether her explanation can quell the backlash she is facing on social media.
Allen's initial comments on Tuesday described hockey players as "white boys who weren't, let's say, very nice."
"They were not generally thoughtful, they were often bullies, their parents were able to spend five-thousand dollars a year on minor hockey -- $5,000 is a lot of money," Allen continued in Tuesday's panel discussion. "You can do other things besides spending your time in an arena; you can go on a trip and learn about the world, see other things, eh? The world is a big place, maybe get outside of that bubble."
After a major amount of anger and the uprise of the hashtag "FireJessAllen" on social media, Allen returned to the show Wednesday with an attempt at clarifying her remarks. She said she was only speaking to her own experiences with specific people who were hockey players. She also responded to a Tweet saying "I never said every white boy, just the ones whose unsavoury behaviour, which didn't feel very Canadian, I witnessed. Because of this, I am guilty of having conflicted feelings about hockey being so closely linked to our national identity."
She responded to another Tweet calling her comments racist and saying she should be fired with "I hate to say it but a lot of you are proving the point I tried to make."
-
-
