Right wing racists and their dirty tricks trying to take Shawn King down...
Shaun King And Why We’re So Quick To Believe White Folks
As I write this, activist Shaun King’s name is trending on Twitter…nationwide. If you are unfamiliar, with all the incidents of police brutality plaguing our nation, King has been a voice within the Black Lives Matter movement. And he doesn’t just have swift Twitter fingers, he’s about that work in real life as well.
King was also set to launch a new organization called the Justice Coalition, which seeks to end police brutality in this country by forming policy teams and launching an additional website to tell the true stories of how police brutality effects its victims.
But he’s not trending because of these new initiatives. He’s trending because people want to know if he’s really Black like he claims to be. They want to know if he’s “the next Rachel Dolezal.” And we all know how she dominated the news cycle for a good two weeks.
Breitbart, a right-winged, conservative news aggregation site named after its founder, Andrew Breitbart, alleged that King, who has said he has a White mother and a Black father, not only lied about being bi-racial. They claim he lied about his ethnicity to get a scholarship to Morehouse from Oprah Winfrey. They also claim he lied about being in a car accident and being attacked by racists during his high school years in rural Kentucky.
Breitbart claims to have obtained a copy of his birth certificate that seems to list a White man as his father.
The story blew up from there. You know folks love to have the tea. And in their quest to join the hashtag or unearth a scandal, many never even took the time to consider the source.
As a journalism major we were taught to question everything. When I was interning for a copywriter at MSNBC, she told me, “If your mother tells you she loves you, get a second opinion.” That’s the mindset we were trained to adopt when attempting to process new information.
Today, when I heard that it was Breitbart that was trying to call Shaun King a liar, I immediately doubted the notion. Not so much because I question everything I hear and read. Admittedly, I’ve become more and more lax on that front, but because I know the recent history of the publication.
For those who were paying attention to the news during the summer of 2010, you may remember Breitbart was the same publication that infamously cost Shirley Sherrod her job with Department of Agriculture.
Breitbart obtained excerpts from a speech Sherrod gave at the at an NAACP event. The site chopped and screwed the video and painted Sherrod as a racist. When in actuality, her speech warned people not to let their personal prejudices stand in the way of helping someone and developing quality friendships.
But everyone trusted Breitbart. Instead of watching the whole video for themselves, the story spread like wildfire. FoxNews led the way and then a New York CBS affiliate picked it up and then the Atlanta Journal Constitution. By that afternoon, Sherrod received numerous emails from government officials asking her to submit her resignation. The NAACP stepped forward saying they condemned her remarks. And her superiors told her The White House requested that she resign immediately.
And it was all a lie, for nothing. A conservative, White publication said something was true, put up a few video clips and a Black woman, who wasn’t even given the opportunity to tell her side of the story, lost her job because of it.
In all honesty, the Shaun King receipts seem plausible, just like the Sherrod receipts did five years ago. A White man on your birth certificate is pretty convincing.
But Breitbart is something like a MediaTakeout for conservative White folks. The story looks good on the surface, but when you do your own investigation, it’s bullshit. And for whatever reason, their rumors don’t just stir up drama and kick up mess, they cause emotional and psychological damage. Sherrod lost her job and was publicly shamed by her people and the government. At the end of the day everybody looked like fools, had to issue apologies, including The White House, and Breitbart, the site and the man, likely revealed in the exposure and visits to their website.
Judging by the way the story about Shaun King took off, their credibility didn’t even suffer.
And that is the very problem King is fighting against. We talk about Black Lives mattering and having value. But when it’s our word against a White man’s we discover we’re still less credible, inferior. It’s devastating when people, particularly Black people, are so ready and willing to believe something just because a White man said it.
I know I’ve referenced this before, but the same thing happened when Barack Obama was running for President. Black folks wanted to vote for him but didn’t think he stood a chance of winning. But when he took Iowa, when they saw that White folks were cosigning him, then all of a sudden we felt comfortable to support our own.
Y’all we don’t need the White man’s cosign anymore.
And we need to question the coverage of Black people on all media platforms, particularly when the only time Black people are mentioned is when someone is attempting to discredit us.
By now you might be wondering did Shaun address his racial makeup. He did, via his Twitter page.
= new reply since forum marked as read
He's bi-racial, like he says he his. I have no doubt about it.
Another DUer once advised that one should never believe right wingers about ANYTHING!
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing
A student at my high school has recently shared his eye witness account and first hand perspective as a white student that grew up in my hometown of Versailles. PLEASE HELP SHARE HIS STORY!
To anybody from my city of Versailles that comes across this story, we should be MORE than vocal about it. During my time in high school, Versailles dropped the ball on how it handled EVERY instance of racial tension.
And to question his race? Since the third grade, Shaun has had to deal with whispers as to his racial make-up. Whispers that no adult helped him deal with or process. Yes, that includes his mother.
Shaun got called “Nigger” just as much, if not more, than myself or any of my black friends and family while growing up in Versailles. Do you think an 8 year old would volunteer for that type of treatment? A funny colored, wavy haired child just trying to navigate life? To have anything from racial slurs to cups full of dip-spit (chewing tobacco) hurled at you from confederate flag covered pick-up trucks? And then 20 years later have some right wing assholes question whether it ever happened and go as far as to call you a fraud and try to de-bunk years of social justice work that you’ve put under your belt?
We grew up in a town where white mothers were constantly dis-owned by their families for having relationships and making children with black fathers. Where even into the 2000’s, the racial identities of mix-raced children were a taboo topic. Shaun was a direct victim of that. 20 years later, much progress has been made in my town of Versailles, but we are proving we have much further to go if people from my home town don’t speak the fuck up.
With all the blatant instances of racism still happening in 2015, imagine what it was like 20 years ago in a rural Kentucky town with a population of less than 8,000. Imagine how a high school and police department would handle a potential “hate crime”.
If this happened in the age of the internet, the story would have spread like wildfire, but 20 years ago, the systematic conditions were in place to sweep Shaun and his situation under the rug.
During those 20 months that Shaun spent time recovering, I was a constant presence at his bedside. Directly following the altercation and many more times over the years, Shaun had numerous spinal surgeries and is still in pain EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE.
He’s told his story countless times, but rarely comments on the amount of pain that he is in on a DAILY.
The extent that news media will go to in order to discredit a soldier that’s dedicated his life to fighting injustice sickens me.
If anything, his entire life of dealing with this mess is the REASON he fights for injustice. Why are these idiots too blind to see that?
Piss off
Willis Polk II pka Deacon (of CunninLynguists)
http://hip-hop-fanatic.tumblr.com/post/127110047338/black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-might-be
and I think they said he was like 87% European mixed with something else, but I don't remember this part that you shared. I must have fallen asleep. But, who knows, they probably will still go after him. That's their m.o. 
His wife?
*Shaun King’s wife has come to his defense in a lengthy Facebook post in the wake of allegations he led people to believe he is black. Conservative blogs have uncovered documents proving that both of his parents are white, and CNN says it has since gotten confirmation from one of King’s family member.
“Shaun is a flawed and imperfect man. He has made many mistakes. Just like me and just like you. But regarding his race, he has never lied. Not once,” writes Rai King in her Facebook post. “His story is beautifully difficult, and painful. And I’ve actually encouraged him to tell it publicly because it is a unique expression of this country’s sordid and ridiculous history with race. But it’s his story to tell. On his own terms. When he’s ready to tell it.”
Rai goes on to say that her husband is “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,” Rai writes. “There’s no spray tan, no fake Black hairstyles, no attempt to make himself appear any more ethnic than he already does.”
Rai ends the post by saying this ordeal has her energized.
“If I lacked courage before, this situation has found it renewed in me,” she writes. “Any student of history understands that this type of scrutiny and demonizing of public figures is an old and tried tactic designed to take the focus off of the work at hand. Well, you may choose to be distracted from this work, but we won’t. Today I am going to teach the Black and Brown 1st graders I love so much. It is in the classroom, through the shaping and molding of young minds, that I stage my protest. Today, Shaun will continue to raise the collective consciousness of us all by writing articles highlighting police brutality. Many expect this media foolishness to take center stage in our lives. It never will.”
Read her entire post below:
Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2015/08/shawn-kings-wife-defends-him-on-fb-hes-no-rachel-dolezal/#aFzisDlYe4a8kMaY.99
What I find interesting here is that King clearly looks biracial… Remember, I come from a family of black people of all shades and colors. If anything, he looks as if he could be my own son…
He has been through hell and back.
And I don't know what's worse, that Glenn Beck and his crew of fuckwits is attacking him or that some "progressives" actually believe that his case is similar to Rachel Dolefraud. 
That people defend her still leaves me gaping in shock.
Shaun said he still suffers from horrible back and neck pain from his injuries. The racist attack took him out of school for a whole year. The school covered it up and the town did too. 
No one ever produced them (she didn't, her community didn't) but people still tout that garbage around with no evidence.
Why I would seriously listen to breitbart on anything related to Black people is laughable.
Whose asses are showing - far worse.
So-called allies. 
To this:
If you remember correctly, her entire defense was hinged on get assertion that she self-identifed as black person born in a white body and she changed her appearance to accommodate her claim, as well as claim that her parents were non-white. They came out and said that that was a lie. Do you recall that this was described as being "transracial?" It's not even the real meaning of the word.
http://newsone.com/3123996/rachel-dolezals-today-show-interview-not-transracial/
None of this had anything to do with her gender… It had to do with her white parents, who went on camera to correct Dolezal's narrative.
Again, besides some unnamed "family member" who called Don fucking Lemon, of all people, to claim that he's "white" and the RWNJ anti-black smears all over the internet, where's the beef about King?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/us/activist-shaun-king-denies-claims-he-lied-about-race-and-assault.html
I simply don't believe her when she claims to be "transracial" to account for her adopting a black heritage in order to compensate for her altogether white one. What was the point of her changing the texture of her hair and darkening her skin?
Don't forget that I've lived long enough in this country to both witness and personally experience how racial identity works. I understand very much, as someone who hails from a visually diverse family background, that not all black people in this country's history have stayed black. However, if some white individual actually has no black background at all, there's absolutely no "transracial" process to turn that person into a black person.
Check this out, this is a page from my family reunion program from last year…
How many of my blood relatives here are white people? The answer is none of them.
We're living in modern times, so there's no impetus to hide it. However, if any of them had decided to live lives as "white" people, who's to say otherwise?
What you should know it that some "white" people in this country, especially if they were born in the civil right era and before, had actually had black heritage and were actually considered black under the "One Drop" rule. They hid this fact and went on to live lives as "white" people, this is called "passing." SO to me, the birth certificate is clearly suspect or at lest not sufficiently explained. Dolezal's parents, for the record, are not such people. They claim that they've alway's been white and openly so.
I refuse to accede to the logic and "evidence" of white RWNJs, who all have very little if any understanding of this country's long history of racial politics, especially as it pertains to the south, while they are hell-bent on discrediting an effective activist for black people.
almost except for ALL the facts.
I'm so sorry he had to open up his life like this because of the hateful attacks. He doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, but I just want to hug him.
It takes true bravery to open up and show that kind of vulnerability, especially after being exposed to so much cruelty.
I forget the names and details, but there was a concerted effort by MRA types to take down several women in Gamergate. But I read that the onslaught on twitter and other social media outlets, attacking the women, was done by relatively few people.
I don't know if sockpuppet is the correct term, but basically one person creating a multitude of profiles -- with many people doing this same thing -- making it seem like the criticism was VAST and widespread, when in reality it was a handful of people.
I wonder if the same thing is happening here. It's effective though, and it really, really, really sucks.
