Over the last few days social activist Shaun King has been fighting off allegations that he is a white male. While King has always identified as bi-racial, conservative media outlets have tried to discredit his contributions to the Black Lives Matter movement with these claims.
King has had to open up his private life to the public because of this ordeal. He responded on Twitter in a lengthy series of tweets, then followed up with a piece on Daily Kos which details the discomfort of it all.
The reports about my race, about my past, and about the pain I’ve endured are all lies. My mother is a senior citizen. I refuse to speak in detail about the nature of my mother’s past, or her sexual partners, and I am gravely embarrassed to even be saying this now, but I have been told for most of my life that the white man on my birth certificate is not my biological father and that my actual biological father is a light-skinned black man. My mother and I have discussed her affair. She was a young woman in a bad relationship and I have no judgment.
Breitbart, one of the right-wing outlets that have gone out the way to question the race of King claimed to have his birth certificate from September 17th, 1979 to a white man name Jeffrey Wayne King. Shaun has vehemently denied that is his father. It has also become a source of discomfort because of the nature of his childhood.
When I was 8 years old and in the second grade, black children first began asking me if I was “mixed.” In our house, my white mother, the sweetest woman ever and one of the best friends I’ve ever had, didn’t talk much about race. Most white families don’t. It’s part of the privilege. I didn’t even know what “mixed” was. This isn’t a secret. I’ve told this story publicly in front of thousands of people.
After that day when I was first asked if I was mixed, while I was still a very young child, kids and their well-intentioned parents began telling me they knew who my black father was, that I was so and so’s cousin, etc. This was in small-town Versailles, Kentucky, in the 1980s. It happened regularly for years on end. While I didn’t have an understanding of the national dialogue on interracial children, I knew even as a young child that what people were telling meant something very peculiar and unflattering about my mother. I was aware at how different I looked than my siblings, but didn’t understand DNA or genealogy. They were my family and I loved them.
The same media figures that tried to out his race, have also tried to assassinate his character and make him to be a joke with Rachael Dolezal comparisons. Comparisons that his wife of over 20 years shut down very effectively.
There’s no spray tan, no fake black hairstyles, no attempt to make himself appear any more ethnic than he already does…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.
The same right-wing pundits have tried to create a false controversy by saying Shaun King lied about his ethnicity to allow him to attend Morehouse in Atlanta, Georgia. The university is a historically black college and have said how they do not grant admission based on race, therefore he would not need to lie to attend their university. They also have tried to use this apparently manufactured story to say he lied about his race to receive an Oprah Winfrey scholarship.
To be clear, I received a full academic and leadership scholarship to attend Morehouse College based on my grades and my leadership skills. I love Morehouse. It helped me heal from the brokenness of my past and my very best friendships and bonds were formed there. When I was forced to leave Morehouse to have yet another spinal surgery, I lost that scholarship and was then offered a scholarship from Oprah Winfrey when I returned to complete my studies. She wanted it to be for “diamonds in the rough” and that was pretty much who I was at that point. I didn’t apply for it. Nobody does. The college selects brothers who need it and I was, very gratefully, chosen for it.
Since finishing Morehouse nearly 15 years ago, I have consistently and publicly shared my complicated story as an interracial child, facing the pressures of racism in an environment that lacked little intelligence or compassion about it. A part of this story has always been that I never chose to be black/interracial. Not only was it chosen for me by birth, but white students and staff fundamentally rejected me. Furthermore, the black community, my peers, their parents, and local black leaders, seeing that I was, in essence, a kid without a community, embraced me in the deepest, most soul-soothing ways. My wife, who has been with me since we were both in high school, has walked with me through this every step of the way and shared her story here earlier today.
It is quite an embarrassment that this has become an issue he has to address. It really speaks volumes of the racial inequality that still exists today. The few voices, that have happened to be white have seemingly outweighed or at the least equaled all the black voices that have personally come to the defense of Shaun King. Even former teachers have collaborated the story of his fight and the car accident that has caused him to have multiple spinal surgeries.
I want to be clear. I love my family. I have never, not once, hidden or been ashamed of my family. They are my biggest supporters and defenders and always have been. Most of the pictures people have shared to prove that I am white actually came from my own social media accounts that I have shared to hundreds of thousands of people. It’s all a farce.
Not one person behind these reports has remotely good intentions—quite the opposite, in fact. Since these articles have been released, my family and I have received constant death threats and nonstop racist harassment. Multiple members of my family have been harassed and we now have been forced to take extra security measures for our safety.
This was the goal… divide and conquer. But I will not allow it to define or distract me for one more day and hope that all of you reading this will move on with me. I have promised my wife, kids, extended family, and friends that this will be the last time I talk about this publicly for a long time. My work has never been about me and I’ve never made a big deal about my race. I’ve actually tried hard to avoid ever making a big deal out of it and have, instead, simply tried to do good work that matters. I’m eager to get back to the cause that concerns me most.
My focus will continue to be ending police brutality. I believe it is the pre-eminent civil rights issue of modern America and that, together, we can fight against it effectively.
Black Lives Matter is a very strong movement and just as important is black voices. Shaun King is one of those voices and the story of his life needs to be told in truth. Too often, the stories of police brutality have swept under the rug and even with video evidence it seems to not be enough. The black community is trying to be silenced by painting Shaun King in this light.
Do not allow random noise to distract the goals that are trying to be achieved. Everything that has been presented against King has not been proven true and yet is being treated as such. Support should still lay with Shaun King because he has done so much to help the cause to stop police brutality and these allegations come from a side that stand to keep the status quo.
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