Yamaneika Turns Argentina’s World Cup Racism Into Thee Problem
Yamaneika Saunders came into the latest You’re the Problem ready to discuss Argentina, Black athletes, bad food and everybody apparently testing her last nerve.
Recording from Las Vegas with producer Tyree Rush, she wastes no time getting to the World Cup mess. “The way y’all sit there and go in the lab to cook up something to insult Black people is crazy to me,” she says before turning an unfortunately named Argentine burger restaurant into a full comedy emergency.
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Argentina, Racist Fans And A Messi She Barely Knows
Yamaneika says Argentina was the subject of her very first school book report. She remembered the scenery, the water and the beauty—and thought she might visit one day. Then people began warning her: “You know they don’t like the Black.”
“I did a book report on Argentina. I didn’t hear about any racism,” she says, frustrated by the history she feels was kept out of the version she learned as a child. By the time racist monkey gestures and chants become part of the World Cup conversation, she is done treating them like isolated incidents.
The segment gets even funnier when Tyree tries to move the conversation toward Lionel Messi and Yamaneika admits she has never heard of him. Tyree explains that Messi is “Beyoncé level.” Her answer is basically: that still does not excuse silence when racist behavior keeps attaching itself to the team and its supporters.
Her point is blunt: Black fans should not have to admire the football and ignore the racism around it. FIFA can promote “No Racism,” but slogans mean very little when supporters still feel comfortable making monkey gestures or singing racist chants.
Angel Reese And The History Inside “Protected Species”
The conversation moves from Argentina to Angel Reese after Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello referred to her as a “protected species.” Yamaneika allows for the possibility that Brondello used the wrong phrase in anger and did not intend a racist comparison.
But she says the apology needed to explain why Black people heard the word “species” so sharply. “Black people have had a long history of being called some form of animal,” she says. For Yamaneika, that history is the part that cannot be skipped just because somebody says they did not mean it that way.
She even checks herself by recalling a Los Angeles road-rage moment when she reached for an ethnic stereotype against another driver. Her point is not that the insult was okay. It is that anger can expose exactly which identity-based language a person knows will cut deepest.
Explosive Diarrhea, Trump Smurf And Bad Food Everywhere
The show then pivots to America’s food scares, including cyclospora and alpha-gal syndrome. Yamaneika describes her own gastrointestinal nightmare as so severe that even her cats looked into the bathroom and decided they would come back another time.
Tyree asks her to choose between explosive diarrhea and “death by ice cream.” She chooses neither, then complains that every new video says something else is unsafe to eat. Somehow the rant ends with Trump Smurf poisoning berries so Gargamel can finally locate the Smurfs.
Stop Using Black Women To Explain Your Preferences
Yamaneika also reacts to a white commentator praising “refined” Black women while insulting Sexyy Red and GloRilla. She is not interested in compliments that require other Black women to be dragged underneath them.
“Every time they encounter a Black woman, they think they’ve encountered every Black woman that is on the Earth,” she says. Her larger point is that bright hair, tight clothing and youth trends are not uniquely Black—and that artists including Doechii, Victoria Monét, Coco Jones, Chlöe and Halle Bailey should not be reduced to what they look like while their writing, producing and talent are ignored.
Who Is The Problem?
The listener letters bring a gay situationship, a birthday dinner with eight cocktails and a child who wants to quit cross-country. Yamaneika’s cleanest ruling comes after the $310 dinner: both women are the problem. One offered “unlimited” without meaning it, and the other forgot that “there are always boundaries in life.”
She closes by admitting that life has been draining her through other people. Releasing them may be sad, but it is giving her space back. “It may not be that you are not good,” she says. “It may be that the energy around you is not good and you need to release some people so that you can fly.”
Watch “Why Calling People Animals Is The Problem”
Watch Yamaneika Saunders and Tyree Rush take on Argentina, Angel Reese, food scares, Black-women commentary and the week’s listener problems.
Source: You’re the Problem, iHeartPodcasts, FIFA and the WNBA.
