I'm giving dude all kinds of side-eyes right now. He's already been accused of stealing money that was raised for Tamir Rice's family and now I'm questioning everything he writes. That story about the pickups with confederate flags at the black kid's birthday party? Shaun King was the only one calling them ARMED pickups. Last night and today, he's been hyping up these potential Cincinnati riots.

I legitimately don't think he's an activist. I think he's fanning the flames of the movement for personal gain.

i be seeing him on twitter and i've retweeted a general tweet from him a time or two but who the hell is he?

makes good points, but comes off as extra sometimes.


but I aint been on twitter in a loooong time.


he was heavy during the mike brown ordeal.

allow me to engage in my own unfounded skepticism

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/24/1405246/-Is-there-something-fishy-about-Shaun-King

(thankfully, the accusation that he stole money from Tamir Rice's family seems to have been debunked, but a number of other troubling accusations are raised)

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

gee whiz, i know it's from known sewer sites, but is it really possible for searching his name to autocomplete 'con man'???)

well, yeah, when you got organizations who fuck w/ ppl for a living or for fun. and the rw blog echo chamber can easily do something like this.

everybody clowned the dude who posted this diary. (think ?uesto's famous '1 post... pussy' reply).

i don't believe them. they need more (and better) people.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

He has a SB ring tho

that's how I feel.

Blind loyalty...until he does something fucked up (verified).

But seriously, he's a good dude. He's a little all over the place in his interests, but I consider him a friend and support him.

He was about this same life even back then, well over a decade ago.
I don't follow him now, though he pops into my timeline every now and then.

I will say that he is the real deal, in that he is someone who believes in what he is doing.

I didn't know that...I guess we were there @ the same time then.

Shaun was a year or two ahead of me, I think.

Or Geron Flynn? Jermaine Crowder? That's all my ole heads from Morehouse

I wanna say they both graduated in 2000 w/ me.

he was a year ahead of me

Went a couple times. He seemed genuinely passionate about activist shit. Feeding homeless. Embracing gays. Crying bout kids he met in Haiti. Think he tried to adopt one.

Could just be a consistent sham, but I assume his intentions are good. Thing about passionate activists is that they aren't always passionate about facts.

he seems to have avoided a number of opportunities to raise money and even get more fame.

so...

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I don't doubt that he believes in these causes, but at the same time, I'm not sure he's above using them to fatten his pockets.

when you can identify these people let me know.

seriously, let me know. I don't think he's above scrutiny, but I'm not seeing the tipoff.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

He made a big splash when he accused Bishop Alvarado of molesting a kid.


.
.
.
"Love your haters until they can love themselves and then love them further." ~ J. Case

while reading a tweet he just wrote about how it's UNAMERICAN to not respond violently to violence. Cat looks like he'd cry after swatting a fly.

For whoever removed he confederate flag from the SC statehouse, I gave him the biggest sideeye. You trying to get OTHER niggas sent to jail for your political statement?

I really don't rock with none of these Black Lives Matter "activists" that popped up outta nowhere. They all seem to be on the same shit as Sean. Motivate kids to get arrested or killed so they can sit back and tweet about it.

#STAYWOKE

#YOUTHEFEDS

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

like you ain't popping up out of nowhere right now to say this b.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

But I'm not motivating anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself. Guess you have no point.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

You must be bored. I'm not. Find someone else to carry on a useless convo with.

https://twitter.com/CoolAssTuck

so....

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I retweet certain informative tweets he makes but still don't trust his motives. Are you the OKP detective or something?

it didn't take mad PI skills.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

with asinine BS?

what do you think your advice is?


www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

But you did use the English language incorrectly twice. Now go play in traffic. I'm done with you.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

to get John Forte to make this thread, in order to serve my mission of reporting militant activities back to head quarters.

You get dumber by the post.

while your twitter handle in your thread showed you definitively do mess with that person
gtfoh

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

in denial? Get it together, bruh. Because I retweet informative posts from someone does not mean I cosign all of their actions. Just doing my little part to disseminate the information. Keep reaching for a way to discredit me because of my low post count and I'll keep embarrassing you. Is your OKP rep worth it?

that's the only label you can carry.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

i never saw get addressed


at the same time the twitter trolls spend days and months harrassing and digging up nonsense on the "big names" doing BLM work. one dude that was doing kids lunches in bmore and ferguson said he is shutting down bc of threats of violence


on king, all things considered id say he is more good than bad

i've gotten a lot of good info from following him

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

They're always poorly written, loose on facts, and amped up for maximum emotional outrage. Then the comments are just arguments.

There's another black writer (actually quite a few) on kos that's much better put together.

So I can't call it. He's pretty prolific with content quantity but loose on quality and it's shit for the site. Now whenever he posts something I just click the links.

...from our interactions he seemed like a genuine and good dude who just overextends himself and sometimes takes on too much....almost to the point of grandiosity...I can see how he could come across as a con to some...but i don't think he is.

We talked about some of the allegations people have made against him.

Here's a link for those who are interested: http://wadeoradio.com/full-interview-with-shaun-king/


Download my new mixtape featuring Lecrae, Andy Mineo, Christon Gray and more. Positive Hip Hop: http://www.noisetrade.com/wadeoradio

lmao anyone who has met him would know how laughable that is. Wish he didn't even respond but understand why he did.

Like wake said above he's a genuine dude. Truly passionate about activism.
He was sga president at morehouse a year while I was there and win a somewhat surprising election. He wasn't apart of the typical sga crew and kinda came out of nowhere to win.

But yea he's always been about it whether I agree with everything he does or not.

They're accusing him of getting an Oprah scholarship intended for black men? I got that scholarship and never told anybody I was black. Completely false.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/us/activist-shaun-king-denies-claims-he-lied-about-race-and-assault.html?_r=0

There's nothing definitive about his race in that article.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-white-article-1.2330658

>They're accusing him of getting an Oprah scholarship intended
>for black men? I got that scholarship and never told anybody I
>was black. Completely false.


~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

Why they pressin this issue & tryna discredit him now?

Shit just ain't right from where I'm standin

I still don't trust him for a number of reasons, but he is who he says he is,

at the kinds of things that were pulled on black activists during the civil rights era.

.

rw troll attack for more than a minute.

all these rumors an such are fuckery.

they been gunning at him for a long time and in a post-dolezal world, it seems like 'they' think this is their most promising line of attack.

this is some bullshit, tho. some of y'all falling for the banana in the tailpipe.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

it's a gotdamn thinkpiece here and there

Muhfucka is yo momma OR daddy black

circle yes or no

People are complicated

lied bout being black

down for the cause. She's clearly crazy and deceitful, but that doesn't mean she didn't have OUR best interest at heart

her problem was the deception and denials.

Rachel knew both of her parents are white and that she has no black ancestry yet she claimed otherwise.

hopefully Shaun hasn't been up to something similar.

again - mama can clear it up. if she told the man his daddy is Black and never gave him reason to believe otherwise and he hasn't seen any evidence that would reasonably lead him to conclude otherwise then IMO he hasn't deceived us where he's claimed Black identity. however, if that's not the case then....

Ole boy from Cunnylinguists had a long one bout his history with dude and still aint answer. Nigga u went to third grade with him u gotta know. Tell us

I dont give a fuck about your 1200 word essay

one word.

real simple.

LOL

that makes him black in my book.

https://www.facebook.com/CunninLynguists/posts/10152996462952617

Shaun King, my great friend of over 30 years, is under severe attack today. He is currently the number one trending topic in the world and everything his attackers are saying is a stone cold lie.

I've known Shaun since I was in the third grade. We both grew up in Versailles, KY. We both graduated from Woodford County High School. We were roommates while attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and we remain close friends to this day. Not only was Shaun beaten to a bloody pulp by a mob of students while we were in high school, my city of Versailles did everything it could to cover up and down play the event from the moment that it happened, as evidenced by half-assed police report and lack of news coverage at the time of the event.
All of this happened during a time where racial tensions were at extreme levels.

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)

where is his momma
where is his daddy

i saw that article that put up a pic of his alleged brother and ummmm

is his daddy black or nah?

sound like on the forensics, mom dukes listed a white dude on the birth certificate, but somebody else mighta had tapped that.

seems odd that dude grew up and self-identified black if there was nothing to it.

unless his mom was hella ahead of the times, like, he don't play w/ dolls so i'ma start buying him dresses type ish.

*shrug*


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

>sound like on the forensics, mom dukes listed a white dude on
>the birth certificate, but somebody else mighta had tapped
>that.

it's all there in between the lines.

he could be a fuckin gypsy for all we know.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

is the daddy black or what?

but i'm not here for think-pieces telling me that the man was called 'nigger' as a boy and he got beat up by a gang of crackers in some Kentucky small town. so? none of that shit happened to me and i'm Black as a motherfucker. b/c both my parents are Black. and that shit has been known to happen to white folks who are down w/the Blacks ('nigger lovers', they call 'em).

so...is the daddy black or nah? simple question. mama can answer it.

then i dunno that he Black.

and aint got no real answer to that question?

He aint afraid to tackle hard issues at all as we see but he cant get out of his momma who his daddy is?

she mighta been fucking hella dudes.

she got one too

aint THAT many niggas in Versailles KY...

if she knocked off 5 of them then he got one of 5 black dads

but he knows if that possible daddy is black

"I'm fairly certain my father is one of these three men"

So now you're demanding that he out his family secret. That's not cool. And it's not cool because that dude is clearly of African descent - we can see it. So why do we need him to be on that Cersei, walk naked through the town and confess your family sins thing?

somebody got to know somethin

not say that his mom a ho...although she might be if i'm making snap judgments

but yea, its a whole lot of guessing going on out here

as of now...he thinks so...his mama unlikely to admit it either way...

i'm ok with not knowing and not giving a fuck bc it sounds like he had good reason to think so

1) I'm glad he does what he does regarding the police brutality stuff but I've always looked at him skeptically because he's prone to being hyperbolic about some of the incidents that may be questionable. I think we should judge him by his work and not his racial identity.

2) I always thought he was white until I saw his black kids and wife.

3) Breitbart smeared Shirley Sherrod and therefore anything that comes from their white supremacist outfit is automatically seen in a racist light. I question every piece of evidence they have regarding Shawn King's life and his family. The pictures they use, the police reports, the birth certificates, any interviews they may have done, I question them all. White supremacists have been declaring light skinned black people to be second class citizens for the past 300 years and I'm not about to feed into their thoughts on racial mixing. They don't know the half of how black people have tried to navigate this color line that they've set up.

>3) Breitbart smeared Shirley Sherrod and therefore anything
>that comes from their white supremacist outfit is
>automatically seen in a racist light. I question every piece
>of evidence they have regarding Shawn King's life and his
>family. The pictures they use, the police reports, the birth
>certificates, any interviews they may have done, I question
>them all. White supremacists have been declaring light
>skinned black people to be second class citizens for the past
>300 years and I'm not about to feed into their thoughts on
>racial mixing. They don't know the half of how black people
>have tried to navigate this color line that they've set up.

the family secret - which I'm starting to think is not an internal family secret at all - which is that his bio father is a Black guy, but a white man was his official father.

certificate, to me (that man's mug shot is shown in the Breitbart article.)

I predict SK will confess in a few weeks that that man is not his biological father.

He really looks like he has African blood, to me.

... this post, but my instinct is to sympathize with him first.

It's bad enough having family secrets that're this deep apparently on
the verge of being aired out so publicly... without the extra element
of race, identity, AND politics layered on top.

I still don't trust him, but FUUUUUUUCK.

like it's a Maury episode.
Obviously, he was thrust into the limelight (because of his work against police brutality mind you), but this is still someone's life with real consequences to real relationships.

was doing this strictly freelance (hell, it's still freelance), i had him on my twitter.

and more than a few ppl, self included, reached out to dude to be careful because he posts and writes under his government. so before the mike brown ish really blew up he was already getting heat and folks testing him.

since then it has only multiplied by 1000.

him, deray and netaaa got targets on their backs. (and i'm sure i'm leaving out some others).

but the thing is, he got a wife and kids. best belee they been considering everything from character assassination to the regular variety for this dude.


it is REALLY interesting watching activism take root and spread within this generation and shape and be shaped by the tools at our disposal.

on some real shit, anyone trying to put in that work better be all the way tight on they p's and q's b/c lives and reputations are on the line and online all the time, and muhfuckas are NOT pulling punches.





peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

killed last week. His mother and my uncle were married, had four kids, and divorced. She remarried and had, what I thought was, three kids with her new husband. Come to find out, that last one was actually my uncles biological child even though he was named as that other man's junior.

I grew up with him, always thought he was my cousin's half brother. My mother called me last week to tell me he had been murdered and referred to him as my uncles son. I was like "That's not Uncle's son, that's Joe's son." My mom was like "Naw baby that's your uncle's son she just didn't want everybody to know that"

WTF man! I hope he knew... I'm kinda thinking he did since he was always so close to our family.

Anyway, the things adults do to save face can fuck up they kids future in many ways.

>It's bad enough having family secrets that're this deep
>apparently on
> the verge of being aired out so publicly... without the extra
>element
>of race, identity, AND politics layered on top.

Edit*... wrong spot.

that guy said in his response. He had no control over that situation and the public doesn't seems to recognize that it is hurtful for everyone involved. Unfortunately this happens all the time too!

And mrap tanks out yesterday

But the trolls/stormfronters got folk discussing king's daddy's backgnd

bcz he dont fit into yur little perfect art smart box... fuck outta here..yall gon question deray next?? clown ass niggas

i'mma need Deray to come out and say he Black and move on thats all

I aint asking for King's life story or who his momma been with or no shit

IS U BLACK OR NAH

Race, love, hate, and me: A distinctly American story

by Shaun King

Over the past 72 hours I have been attacked with lies by the conservative media, lies that have been picked up by the traditional media and spread further. I have kept silent at the advice of friends and mentors, but I will do so no longer.
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. This has been my lived reality for nearly 30 of my 35 years on earth. I am not ashamed of it, or of who I am—never that—but I was advised by my pastor nearly 20 years ago that this was not a mess of my doing and it was not my responsibility to fix it. All of my siblings and I have different parents. I'm actually not even sure how many siblings I have. It is horrifying to me that my most personal information, for the most nefarious reasons, has been forced out into the open and that my private past and pain have been used as jokes and fodder to discredit me and the greater movement for justice in America. I resent that lies have been reported as truth and that the obviously racist intentions of these attacks have been consistently downplayed at my expense and that of my family.

For my entire life, I have held the cards of my complicated family history very close to my chest. I preferred to keep it that way and deeply resent that I have been forced to authenticate so many intimate details of my life to prove who I really am. This, in and of itself, is a form of violence. The same sources who falsely reported my family history—including Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and The Blaze—have also falsely reported that my wife and I were never in a brutal car accident, that I lied about how many kids we have (we have 5 now, but have had more/less because we've fostered, adopted, housed many of our nieces and nephews), that I lied about my race to get a scholarship from Oprah, that I lied about how many back surgeries I’ve had, and more. All of those things were completely and totally false, but have simply been ignored at my expense. I don’t know why this shocks me, but it does.

Let me share some of my peculiar American story about race, my unwavering love for my mother, and my gratitude for an entire community of people who’ve walked with me through this for my entire life.

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.

I adored my mother so much then, that I just didn’t have the nerve to ever bring these things up to her. I was a child and loved our care-free relationship. She had been married and divorced several times and by the time I was in second grade she was raising my brother and me as a single mom. By the time I reached middle school, I fully identified myself not even as biracial, but just as black. Of course, that was an oversimplification of my story, but that was what made sense at that time. Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth.

Every friend I had was black, my girlfriends were black, I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager. Never have I once identified myself as white. Not on forms, not for convenience or privilege, and not for fun and games, have I ever identified myself as white. I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite—I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.

My freshman year in high school, another student and I got into a huge fight at a football game. The fight ended up setting off a powder keg of racial tensions at our school. The school paper back then referred to me as black and him as white. We were suspended for three days and while we were out, racial tensions boiled over so much that hundreds of white students staged a walkout because they had just been banned from wearing Confederate flags.

When I returned to school from that suspension, the collective anger of the racist white students was focused on me daily. Dozens of my close friends experienced this racist hate alongside me and it broke us down in the worst ways. I was consistently called nigger, spat on, had a jar of tobacco spit thrown in my face, forced into fights, and on two different occasions chased by pickup trucks attempting to maul us. In 2007, one of the students in one of those trucks wrote me a beautiful, moving apology for calling me a nigger and more on that scary dark night. I published it back then.

In March of 1995, it all boiled over and a racist mob of nearly a dozen students beat me severely, first punching me from all sides, then, when I cradled into a fetal position on the ground they stomped me mercilessly, some with steel-toed boots, for about 20 seconds. That day changed the entire trajectory of my life. Thankfully, multiple credible, unbiased eyewitnesses to this traumatic day have come out publicly and spoken on my behalf in the past 48 hours.

I had fractures in my face and ribs, but most badly damaged was my spine. I ended up having three spinal surgeries and missed 20 months of school over it. My entire family endured this deeply painful time in my life ranging from the surgeries, the brutal recovery, physical therapy, and professional counseling. It was rougher than my words will ever do justice. Many people have said that in the police report it listed me as white—as if I checked the box and that was some deep admission. Today, that officer admitted to the New York Times that I never said I was white, but that he assumed so when he saw my mother. He and the school badly mishandled my case. We sued the school system for years because of their mishandling of it. They fought it tooth and nail and my mother and I eventually just gave up on it.

Rev. Willis Polk, a local pastor, and my best friend's father, visited and prayed with me often during those surgeries. I became a Christian during my recovery. I was baptized and preached my first sermons as a high school teenage minister in the black church. Rev. Polk, his son Willis, and I toured HBCU’s together in 1996 and we knew that Morehouse College in Atlanta was the only place for us. We loved it.

Again, this wasn’t me sneaking into Morehouse as an undercover white man. I was 17 and my racial identity was fully formed. I knew who I was. I wasn’t appropriating or faking, but living out my life. During this entire time, my mother and I had an unspoken understanding about my race. Her past, in a sense, was taboo for me, and I had honestly moved on from even wanting to know the details of who she slept with in January of 1979. I sincerely didn’t care and had compartmentalized it deep in my mind and moved on the best I could.

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 past 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.

Outside of my mother’s home, as a kid I lived a deeply black experience. Black families invited me to attend vacation Bible school. I attended black family reunions where old people would come up and pinch my cheeks and tell me who I looked like in their family. I went to black skate parties, black block parties/festivals, and did so not as a white intruder, but as a Karl Kani wearing, widely welcomed, light-skinned black kid. I soaked up every moment I had as I was fully, unabashedly loved, even doted upon, by black families throughout central Kentucky. It was a refuge for me and also a rite of passage of sorts. In high school I joined exclusively black achievers groups. With scholars I love and respect to this day at the University of Kentucky, I attended and helped plan King Day events, and just lived my life.

Until this past week, never has anyone asked me who my father was during these 35 years of mine. It occurs to me now that I’ve never asked anyone that question either. It’s an odd question, and, in my case, has a complicated, deeply personal answer, but one that I have actually seen lived out many other times. I have walked other people very close to my wife and I through what it is like to find out that the person you believed was your father actually isn’t. This is a pretty common thing.

I now see pictures of all of our young children, distant relatives, and even people who I am not actually related to spread across the internet in an attempt to shame us somehow. This is disgusting. 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.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO SHAUNKING ON THU AUG 20, 2015 AT 03:39 PM PDT.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

LOL.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/20/1413881/-Race-love-hate-and-me-A-distinctly-American-story

I can imagine how pissed off he is and I hope he and those rallying
alongside or behind him can use that anger constructively.

"The name on my birth certificate isn't my dad. My real dad is black. That is all"

You happy now?

All he did was put in print what was obvious from looking at him and looking at his birth certificate. Why couldn't you just leave it at what was plainly apparent from looking at his picture?

demanding mofos spill their family secrets to strangers for no good reason.

I said yes or no. It aint that hard


He dont look all the way black to me so i dont know


If he woulda just said "Nah yo my real dad is black" i was good

all i asked for in reply 72 was a yes or no

U and all these other muhfuckas thats saving lives n shit on that extra shit

sooooo what else was he supposed to say?

i jumped in from the recent shit.

Dolezal said she was biracial too and we saw how that went.

If they comin at u again about it say it loud

I'M HALF BLACK AND I'M PROUD

>If they comin at u again about it say it loud
>
>I'M HALF BLACK AND I'M PROUD

And to believe that at won point for the future I wanted that kind of recognition on social media as an "activist".

Nah b, Ima try my best to keep my community outreach with the people who need it. No need to show off to the world, cuz that's where the issues begin. The more you're out there, the easier it is for folks to dig stuff up about you. And even if you don't have dirt, they will still try to crucify you.

Keep it sealed like Questo and Black Thought have done and continue to do (GrassROOTS is a BEAUTIFUL org). And Jay also.

But of course, when you try to keep low key, people accuse you of not doing anything or not doing "enough".

Moral of the story is: when you're in the eye of the public, no matter how many thousands of followers or supporters you have, please try your best to be true to yourself and don't do nothing shiesty. Because it will be exposed. So be genuine... And when the time comes for the common people to have the inclination to investigate, they won't find jack squat.

And receipts=bail

/rant/

Totally agree.

You have to be bulletproof to be in the public eye..especially in this social media age..or expect to have your past dug up..

I can't say I feel sorry for Shaun though...I salute him for his work but he had to expect this.

Let folks be distracted by all the other bullshit and quietly work in the communities to improve the people which will improve their conditions and ultimately their way of life. If done right black folks in particular could really catch the system of white supremacy sleeping.

does it really matter?

wonder what bin's doing?
http://i.imgur.com/phECCMp.jpg

Like-- how would that even matter? Don Lemon is fucking clown., asked him are you black or white via twitter or something. Man I wish someone would ask me a dumb ass question like that on a public platform.

Nah I think he's a good dude. I think the conservative media is trying to discredit him so they can discredit the Black Lives Matter movement. Its the same thing they did with the Panthers. Its just that the government isn't behind it this time.

Its sad.

or else you aint official....smh.. silly negros

Dude had to know this was going to come up at some point. I think he handled it well but I don't see how he would think white people wouldnt try that "is he Rachel Dolezalling"

Were black people questioning him as well?

>
>Were black people questioning him as well?


these bandwagoning ass niggers got serious nerve to question this man out here fighting on the front lines for their freedom.. smh...

aint nothing wrong with saying

NAH MUHFUCKA I'M BLACK

say it again

be proud of that shit.

Thow it in they face even

NAW MUHFUCKA LEMME CUT YOU OFF THERE I'M BLACK

you aint gotta come out with a heartwrenching story bout what somebody did to u in 8th grade

NAW MUHFUCKA I'M BLACK

that wasn't enough...

u weren't aware that he been said that...so "mea culpa" and stfu yo

and u aint shutting me up nigga. Ever. Run tell that.

gotdamn that was perfect

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/20/1413881/-Race-love-hate-and-me-A-distinctly-American-story#


Race, love, hate, and me: A distinctly American story

Over the past 72 hours I have been attacked with lies by the conservative media, lies that have been picked up by the traditional media and spread further. I have kept silent at the advice of friends and mentors, but I will do so no longer.
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. This has been my lived reality for nearly 30 of my 35 years on earth. I am not ashamed of it, or of who I am—never that—but I was advised by my pastor nearly 20 years ago that this was not a mess of my doing and it was not my responsibility to fix it. All of my siblings and I have different parents. I'm actually not even sure how many siblings I have. It is horrifying to me that my most personal information, for the most nefarious reasons, has been forced out into the open and that my private past and pain have been used as jokes and fodder to discredit me and the greater movement for justice in America. I resent that lies have been reported as truth and that the obviously racist intentions of these attacks have been consistently downplayed at my expense and that of my family.

For my entire life, I have held the cards of my complicated family history very close to my chest. I preferred to keep it that way and deeply resent that I have been forced to authenticate so many intimate details of my life to prove who I really am. This, in and of itself, is a form of violence. The same sources who falsely reported my family history—including Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and The Blaze—have also falsely reported that my wife and I were never in a brutal car accident, that I lied about how many kids we have (we have 5 now, but have had more/less because we've fostered, adopted, housed many of our nieces and nephews), that I lied about my race to get a scholarship from Oprah, that I lied about how many back surgeries I’ve had, and more. All of those things were completely and totally false, but have simply been ignored at my expense. I don’t know why this shocks me, but it does.

Let me share some of my peculiar American story about race, my unwavering love for my mother, and my gratitude for an entire community of people who’ve walked with me through this for my entire life.

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.

I adored my mother so much then, that I just didn’t have the nerve to ever bring these things up to her. I was a child and loved our care-free relationship. She had been married and divorced several times and by the time I was in second grade she was raising my brother and me as a single mom. By the time I reached middle school, I fully identified myself not even as biracial, but just as black. Of course, that was an oversimplification of my story, but that was what made sense at that time. Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth.

Every friend I had was black, my girlfriends were black, I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager. Never have I once identified myself as white. Not on forms, not for convenience or privilege, and not for fun and games, have I ever identified myself as white. I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite—I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.

My freshman year in high school, another student and I got into a huge fight at a football game. The fight ended up setting off a powder keg of racial tensions at our school. The school paper back then referred to me as black and him as white. We were suspended for three days and while we were out, racial tensions boiled over so much that hundreds of white students staged a walkout because they had just been banned from wearing Confederate flags.

When I returned to school from that suspension, the collective anger of the racist white students was focused on me daily. Dozens of my close friends experienced this racist hate alongside me and it broke us down in the worst ways. I was consistently called nigger, spat on, had a jar of tobacco spit thrown in my face, forced into fights, and on two different occasions chased by pickup trucks attempting to maul us. In 2007, one of the students in one of those trucks wrote me a beautiful, moving apology for calling me a nigger and more on that scary dark night. I published it back then.

In March of 1995, it all boiled over and a racist mob of nearly a dozen students beat me severely, first punching me from all sides, then, when I cradled into a fetal position on the ground they stomped me mercilessly, some with steel-toed boots, for about 20 seconds. That day changed the entire trajectory of my life. Thankfully, multiple credible, unbiased eyewitnesses to this traumatic day have come out publicly and spoken on my behalf in the past 48 hours. A few days after I was assaulted, I was at home recovering when a group of rednecks literally pulled up in my driveway at night, but were chased off by a neighbor with a big flashlight. That neighbor just posted his memory of it.

I had fractures in my face and ribs, but most badly damaged was my spine. I ended up having three spinal surgeries and missed 20 months of school over it. My entire family endured this deeply painful time in my life ranging from the surgeries, the brutal recovery, physical therapy, and professional counseling. It was rougher than my words will ever do justice. Many people have said that in the police report it listed me as white—as if I checked the box and that was some deep admission. Today, that officer admitted to the New York Times that I never said I was white, but that he assumed so when he saw my mother. He and the school badly mishandled my case. We sued the school system for years because of their mishandling of it. They fought it tooth and nail and my mother and I eventually just gave up on it.

Rev. Willis Polk, a local pastor, and my best friend's father, visited and prayed with me often during those surgeries. I became a Christian during my recovery. I was baptized and preached my first sermons as a high school teenage minister in the black church. Rev. Polk, his son Willis, and I toured HBCU’s together in 1996 and we knew that Morehouse College in Atlanta was the only place for us. We loved it.

Again, this wasn’t me sneaking into Morehouse as an undercover white man. I was 17 and my racial identity was fully formed. I knew who I was. I wasn’t appropriating or faking, but living out my life. During this entire time, my mother and I had an unspoken understanding about my race. Her past, in a sense, was taboo for me, and I had honestly moved on from even wanting to know the details of who she slept with in January of 1979. I sincerely didn’t care and had compartmentalized it deep in my mind and moved on the best I could.

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.

Outside of my mother’s home, as a kid I lived a deeply black experience. Black families invited me to attend vacation Bible school. I attended black family reunions where old people would come up and pinch my cheeks and tell me who I looked like in their family. I went to black skate parties, black block parties/festivals, and did so not as a white intruder, but as a Karl Kani wearing, widely welcomed, light-skinned black kid. I soaked up every moment I had as I was fully, unabashedly loved, even doted upon, by black families throughout central Kentucky. It was a refuge for me and also a rite of passage of sorts. In high school I joined exclusively black achievers groups. With scholars I love and respect to this day at the University of Kentucky, I attended and helped plan King Day events, and just lived my life.

Until this past week, never has anyone asked me who my father was during these 35 years of mine. It occurs to me now that I’ve never asked anyone that question either. It’s an odd question, and, in my case, has a complicated, deeply personal answer, but one that I have actually seen lived out many other times. I have walked other people very close to my wife and I through what it is like to find out that the person you believed was your father actually isn’t. This is a pretty common thing.

I now see pictures of all of our young children, distant relatives, and even people who I am not actually related to spread across the internet in an attempt to shame us somehow. This is disgusting. 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.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO SHAUNKING ON THU AUG 20, 2015 AT 03:39 PM PDT.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, SUPPORT THE DREAM DEFENDERS, WHITE PRIVILEGE WORKING GROUP, AND DAILY KOS.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

are you black??? shit









lolol

and not, as far as anybody can tell, started by faceless trolling racists like the ongoing shaun king witch hunt is

i'm if you look at her circle there and other people on the "board" for BLM, they are talking shit about Deray, Netta and the rest for the Campaign Zero website. It's so pathetic. First they get mad at Deray for hitting up Bernie, when it's not like they were getting mad at the SCLC, NAACP, ACLU, or any other group working on police brutality for meeting with Bernie and his people. Then they're mad that Deray and nem put up a website judging the candidates when it's actually the lazy media who wants to put every police accountability action that any young black person takes under the banner of BLM. I don't understand why they're so defensive about someone coopting the name, when they've clearly coopted the work of the activists in Ferguson who are putting their lives on the line and aren't members of BLM.

wants their shine and everyone is mad at everyone for not doing it exactly how they would do it.

apparently sanders folk reached out to official 'blm inc.' first and were told to wait, ie they weren't ready a year later

from that to tryna fight the one chick -which was all her, not the board

just bad looks all around




>i'm if you look at her circle there and other people on the
>"board" for BLM, they are talking shit about Deray, Netta and
>the rest for the Campaign Zero website. It's so pathetic.
>First they get mad at Deray for hitting up Bernie, when it's
>not like they were getting mad at the SCLC, NAACP, ACLU, or
>any other group working on police brutality for meeting with
>Bernie and his people. Then they're mad that Deray and nem
>put up a website judging the candidates when it's actually the
>lazy media who wants to put every police accountability action
>that any young black person takes under the banner of BLM. I
>don't understand why they're so defensive about someone
>coopting the name, when they've clearly coopted the work of
>the activists in Ferguson who are putting their lives on the
>line and aren't members of BLM.

> when they've clearly coopted the work of
>the activists in Ferguson who are putting their lives on the
>line and aren't members of BLM.

Thats what's killing me; you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You want to be a organization with 26 chapters and a board? Awesome, get that organized and come out with a C-O-N-C-I-S-E action plan. Don't get mad when people ask you for one also, because an organization is expected to have solid goals and plans to get there.

If you want to be move of a movement with no central power, then anyone should be able to push things forward and nobody should get mad if they kind of get pushed in the banner because at the end of the day there's a 95% overlap anyway.

Seems they just got mad at Bernie's people calling Deray #BLM and took it from there. It's just shitty ass politics and makes me give them all the side eye considering that many of the people on the ground originally, like you pointed out, have no fucking clue what a #BLM is. They just want police brutality to stop in their communities, they aren't working on their resume for future non-for profit jobs.

burnishing their credentials so they can get some speakers fees

not that they won't be in the future.

if you don't become a public servant, you really just want the power and some financial security.

And crushed the presses

http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-york-daily-news-hires-columnist-blacklivesmatter-activist-shaun-king/



https://mobile.twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/672745824447787008

https://mobile.twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/672609669307830272

https://mobile.twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/672234341800521728


This one got Christie maaaad
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/christie_blasts_liberal_ny_daily_news_over_san_ber.html


Was the nydn always this liberal? I don't remember that at all.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/after-twitter-feud-jason-whitlock-interview-of-shaun-king-devolves-into-total-shtshow/

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

but obviously king because whitlock is a sack of shit.

thievery accusations or no, I'd prefer king even if I saw him set fire to a pile of my own donated money

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Yeah, I gotta agree with this. He really made me a fan of his after the Peyton article. 😂

It's due to the Justice Together fiasco. He says King is pretty much about himself first and foremost.

I kind of like King as a writer, but I understand the criticisms.