After a 13-year tenure with 106.7 the Fan, sports-radio host Chad Dukes has been fired due to what his employer described as “racist and other inappropriate comments” that he made on his podcast. However, the exact comments that got him axed were not specified.
Now people on Twitter and Reddit are speculating that the offending words appeared during a September 14 episode of “The Big O and Dukes,” which Dukes co-hosts with Oscar Santana and Drab T-Shirt. The episode, “Built For Speed,” features an exchange about an hour into the episode regarding how the NFL has been handling ongoing racial-justice protests. After a back-and-forth about whether it’s time to move on from kneeling during the national anthem, Dukes says the following:
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.
We’ve reached out to Entercom, which owns the Fan, to ask if this has anything to do with his firing. You can listen to the full episode here.
Daniella Byck joined Washingtonian in 2022. She was previously with Outside Magazine and lives in Northeast DC.
