"Black Lives Matter" activist denies he lied about race
A racial justice activist and leading voice in the "Black Lives Matter" movement has denied accusations that he lied about being African-American.
Shaun King, a Daily Kos columnist who gained notoriety during the protests that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, has said his father is black and his mother is white. King, who received a scholarship sponsored by Oprah Winfrey, graduated from historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta.
However, conservative bloggers, citing a 1995 police report, say that King is lying about his race. In the report, in which King claims to have been the victim of a racially motivated assault, King's race is marked as white.
The conservative media site Breitbart published the report with the headline: "Did Black Lives Matter Organizer Shaun King Mislead Oprah Winfrey By Pretending To Be Biracial?"
That prompted King to unleash a lengthy rebuttal on Twitter, where he has 370,000 followers:
31. Every single person who knows me BEYOND Twitter, beyond trending topics and HIT PIECES, knows I have never lied about my race.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 19, 2015
34. In closing, I'm not going to stop doing what I do, being who I am, or fighting the fights that I fight to end police brutality.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 19, 2015
King is the second high-profile activist this year to be accused of lying about their race. In June, Rachel Dolezal stepped down as president of Spokane's NAACP chapter after her parents came forward and said she was lying about being African-American.
On Thursday, King's wife took to Facebook to defend her husband and say there is no comparison between King and Dolezal.
"Just know this," Rai King wrote. "There is nothing fake about Shaun King. He's no Rachel Dolezal. What's white about him is white, and what's Black about him is Black and always has been from the time he was a child."