A civil rights attorney was embarrassed live on air Tuesday when she was scolded by a radio host she said possessed white privilege.
Areva Martin, who describes herself as an 'advocate, commentator, author, TV host and producer' was speaking on David Webb's Sirius XM radio program about experience being more important than race when it comes to landing a job role.
However the co-host of Face the Truth on CBS and
CNN Legal Analyst seemingly made the mistake of assuming the presenter's race when he claimed he had never regarded his race as a barrier when obtaining work.
'I've chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I'm qualified to be in each one. I never considered my color the issue, I considered my qualifications the issue,' Webb said on his Patriot show.
It led Martin to respond with a statement that suggested she believed Webb was Caucasian.
'That's a whole, another long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don't have the privilege of,' she replied.
It emerged she had the wrong idea when Webb probed further into her thinking.
'How do I have the privilege of white privilege?' he questioned her. To which she hit back. 'David, by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege.'
'You see, you went to white privilege; this is the falsehood in this,' Webb hit back. 'You went immediately with an assumption. Your people, obviously, or you didn't look.
'Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should've been better prepped. I'm black.'
After the embarrassing blunder on Tuesday Martin tried to shift the blame on researchers but ultimately said sorry for the assumption.
'It is and I apologize,' Martin agreed about her own misunderstanding. 'I was given wrong information.'
While Martin's reps declined to comment to various publications after the mishap, Webb later mocked the incident on his Twitter page.
Posting images of himself alongside white men, he wrote: 'Just two guys showing their #WhitePrivelege.'