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Floyd Mayweather Jr. may be taking hits for reading issues on social media, but Marc Lamont Hill isn’t among those making fun of the boxing champ. Hill, a professor/media personality who often comments on social, racial and cultural issues via his various media platforms including Twitter, doesn’t think shaming Mayweather is funny.

“I don’t see any humor in mocking Floyd Mayweather on this reading stuff. It feels cruel and out-of-bounds..,” Hill tweeted Friday. “Also, as ‪@bomani_jones said earlier, you may find that some of the people laughing with you may make you uncomfortable. First of all, y’all don’t know if Floyd can read or not. Struggling to read a ‘drop’ out loud doesn’t mean you’re illiterate… Plenty of people can read just fine but have “fluency” issues that would make reading a teleprompter or script difficult. Also, the public shaming of literacy is why people DON’T get help for reading…”

Hill’s comments come days after 50 Cent put Mayweather on with Instagram videos that challenged the boxer to read live on The Jimmy Kimmel Show with a vow by 50 to donate $750,000 to charity if Mayweather could successfully read a page from a “Harry Potter” book or the classic children’s story The Cat In The Hat out loud.

Recently, as we reported, The Breakfast Club fanned the flames of the situation by airing an old audio clip of Mayweather attempting to read a drop for ShowYourStripes.org. Despite Charlamagne taking 10 seconds to read the script live on air, in the audio it took Mayweather multiple tries to complete the task.

As he defended Mayweather, Hill didn’t let 50 Cent off the hook. The social commentator made it a point to “keep it 100” as he noted 50’s grammar on Twitter as a sign of the rapper’s own struggles with spelling and grammar.

“And finally, just to keep it 100, half of 50 Cent’s tweets are filled with gross misspellings that would suggest undeveloped literacy….,” Hill mentioned. “Not even going in on 50, but just scroll down his TL right now. Read his last 20 tweets.How many reflect a strong grasp of Standard English? I don’t really care about the Floyd or 50 beef. I just don’t want us to get into the cultural practice of mocking struggling readers… There’s plenty of stuff to criticize Floyd for: crass consumerism, domestic abuse, etc. Focus on that… Not his reading…“It’s amazing that more people are shaming Floyd for literacy issues than domestic abuse allegations,” he added.

Hill’s remarks comes as Mayweather responded to 50 Cent and others critical of his reading ability. Taking to Instagram, the athlete posted pictures of two paychecks he got from a couple of recent fights.

“Read this $72,276,000.00,” Mayweather posted. “God bless.”

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