Former MSNBC host Joy Reid joked Thursday about her “breakup” from the network earlier this week.
Speaking at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards in Los Angeles, the broadcaster opened the event with a lighthearted acknowledgment of her show’s cancellation.
“Now, I think you might have heard that I’ve recently been through a breakup—but not with my husband!” she told the audience. “Not with my husband, because today actually is our anniversary.”
Reid has been married to Jason Reid since 1997, and they have three children.
The abrupt change in Reid’s career arc was part of wider changes by MSNBC to its on-air programming. In addition, production staffers have been let go, with the option to apply for new roles.
Some of Reid’s now-former colleagues, like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, strongly opposed the cancellation of The ReidOut, which had launched in 2020. Maddow also took particular issue with the network’s two non-white primetime hosts now no longer have their shows.
Reid, later on during Thursday’s event, said Black women “are living at a time of theft,” and that “our history is at risk of being stolen away.”
“Our opportunity to participate in this democracy is being threatened,” she warned, per The Hollywood Reporter. “We are losing the service, potentially, of federal workers who are disproportionately us in the service that we disproportionately give.”
“This country is becoming more diverse, whether people like it or not, and so if you want to sell dollies, you’re going to need a Black mermaid, because all the little Black and brown girls want to see themselves in those characters,” Reid said.
“Equity is important because we come in knowing we have to be better, more educated, stronger, more prepared than anyone else when we walk into a room. And so we are. And so in each of the spaces that we exist, we tend to be the best,” she continued, firmly backing the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that the Trump administration is doing away with.
“And that equity is not just equity for us, it’s equity for these companies and organizations that we serve,” she argued.
“It makes their organizations better, and inclusion is just reality. There’s nothing you can do to reverse the tide that is making this a more diverse country.”
