Did Black Lives Matter Organizer Shaun King Mislead Oprah
Winfrey By Pretending To Be Biracial?
by Milo Yiannopoulos 19 Aug 2015
An investigative blogger has accused Shaun King, a key
figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, of misleading
media icon Oprah Winfrey by pretending to be
biracial in order to qualify for an “Oprah scholarship” to
historically black Morehouse College.
The blogger says King is white and has been lying about his ethnicity for
years.
King is a high-profile campaigner
against “police brutality” and “justice correspondent” for
the liberal Daily Kos website who told Rebel
magazine in 2012 that he was biracial, with the magazine reporting that he is
the “son of a Caucasian mother and an African-American father.” He
has also described himself as “mixed
with a black family” on Twitter.
King has been lionised by the press, praised as hero of
civil rights and social activism. He has
written extensively about a childhood in which he was terrorised by “decades
old racial tensions.” He claims to have been “the
focus of constant abuse of the resident rednecks of my school.”
Yet, in recent weeks, rumours have been
circulating about his ethnicity. A 1995 police incident report
lists Shaun King’s ethnicity as white. And blogger Vicki Pate, who
has been assembling forensic
accounts of Shaun
King’s background and family tree on her blog, “Re-NewsIt!,” has
published her findings.
She claims
that King is entirely white and says a birth certificate,
which Breitbart has since independently acquired from the Kentucky Office of
Vital Statistics, names a white man as his father.
King’s case echoes that of Rachel Dolezal, a civil rights
activist from Washington who claimed
to be biracial while in fact being of caucasian origin. Dolezal
continues to insist she “identifies as black,” despite her parents
revealing that she is entirely white.
If Pate is right, Shaun King, who often uses black and white
photographs of himself online rather than colour images, may have
misled African-American hero Winfrey by applying for and accepting an
Oprah Scholarship to the historically black Morehouse College. Oprah
Scholarships are given exclusively to black men.
In his Daily
Kos diary,
King refers to himself as a “brother,” writing: “Oprah Winfrey paid
my way through Morehouse. The leadership scholarship that I received from her
is why I have a college degree today. Five hundred other brothers have the
exact same story.”
Shaun King’s biography has attracted the attention of
bloggers and journalists thanks to several bizarre inconsistencies in his
public claims. He often struggles when asked to recall basic facts about
his own life. For instance, in August 2014, King wrote on Twitter that he was father to three
“black girls,” while, six months earlier, he claimed to be father to four.
It is of course possible that a family tragedy is
responsible for the inconsistency, but the unexplained change in
biographical details is not a one-off. In October 2009, King claimed to have endured four spinal surgeries.
By February 2010, the number of surgeries had
shrunk to three. There is also some
confusion about when an alleged car crash may
or may not have happened.
As it turns out, these explosive new racial
allegations are just the latest in a string of controversies surrounding
Shaun King: on July 21, a conservative blog reported that his account of a
“brutal, racially-motivated beating” in 1995, which at least
two reports have described as “Kentucky’s first hate crime,” did not
match up with a police report from the case.
“King, 35, has related the story of the hate crime on his
blogs and in his recent self-help book, seemingly to bolster his credibility as
an activist and as a self-help guru,” wrote
the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross. “While King has said that
he was attacked by up to a dozen ‘racist’ and ‘redneck’ students, official
records show that the altercation involved only one other student.”
“And while King has claimed that he suffered a
‘brutal’ beating that left him clinging to life, the police report
characterized King’s injuries as ‘minor,'” Ross reported.
This month, more
details have emerged from King’s account that do not match up with the police
report or eyewitness accounts from journalists who noticed that
King’s
public claims did not square with reality.
Remarkably, King’s own
publication the Daily Kos, at which he is listed as a staff writer,
ran a provocatively titled blog post in July of this year: “Is
there something fishy about Shaun King?” The post alleged that
people had been asking questions about King for some
time and linked to the earlier Daily Caller report.
“While I know that it’s in a right-wing publication, there
was something that prevented me from instantly dismissing the article … I’ve
seen a number of people on Daily Kos complain that Shaun plays fast and
loose with the truth,” wrote
contributor Burt Miles. “So I started to do some digging on the
Internet and found a lot of information which, if true, makes me very concerned
about Shaun, his motives, and how his actions could reflect badly on this site
and be used to smear the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Miles continued: “Is there anything to all this, or is it
some kind of organized smear campaign? And, if it is a smear campaign, how does
it involve so many different sites, publications and individuals?”
It was around the same time that Breitbart contacted
Vicki Pate, who has been investigating King’s claims for several years.
Pate provided key documents that appear to show that King has two white parents
and that he has been lying to the public about his race.
One of them is his birth certificate, listing his parents as
Naomi Kay Fleming and Jeffery Wayne King and a birth date of September 17, 1979
in Versailles, Kentucky. King had already told
journalists his mother was white. So all that remained for Pate to
determine was whether his father was white too.
King has always claimed that his father is black. But King’s
father, Jeffery, is white, says Pate. She points to a man born 11
November 1955 in Campbell, Kentucky who has been the subject
of multiple arrests, including
for motoring and drug offences. That birth date would make him 23 at the
time of Shaun King’s birth, the same age given on Shaun’s birth certificate.
The Jeffery Wayne King whose name and date of birth concord
with Shaun King’s birth certificate is pictured below, in a 2007 police
mug shot. Various documents give his name as “Jeffery” and “Jeffrey” Wayne
King, names which are common variants of one another, but King Snr’s date of
birth and place of residence is the same in all records.
What’s more, Pate says she
has definitively linked the man pictured in these mugshots to Shaun King
via Shaun’s brother, Kentucky Air Guard Russ King, who is also clearly
caucasian. Finally, public
records show only one J Wayne King in the state.
Jeffery Wayne King in 2007
By 2015,
Shaun King had finessed his account of growing up black and
suffering discrimination. “I was raised in rural Kentucky,” he told the
blog Generation Progress. “It was actually pretty
rough. African Americans faced a lot of racism and discrimination growing
up. I never really experienced overt racism myself until high school,” he
claimed.
“I was put into a weird position when a huge group of
students (who called themselves “rednecks”) hated me for no reason.”
King must have known while giving interviews as late as 2015
that Vicki Pate was tracking down his family history. But he continued to
deliver craftily-worded answers to interview questions that gave the impression
he was a person of color and that he had been the victim of hate crimes.
Neither is true, says Pate. She told Breitbart last
night that King has never denied her accusations. “Shaun King has not
denied the story to me, or anyone else, as far as I know,” she said. “Whenever
it is mentioned on Twitter he simply blocks whoever is asking and reports them
for ‘harassment.’ He did reply to one person but only to say, ‘Haters gonna
hate.’ I myself have been suspended from Twitter just for posing the question.”
King did not return multiple requests for
comment via email and social media. He has since blocked us, too.
Morehouse
College
Otis
Moss III is a trustee at Morehouse
College, Otis Moss Jr’s son, and
a pastor at the Trinity United Church of
Christ (Chicago).
Note: Otis Moss Jr. is Otis Moss III’s father, was a friend of
Martin Luther King Jr, and a pastor
at the Ebenezer Baptist Church (Atlanta).
Martin Luther
King Jr. was a friend of Otis Moss
Jr, a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist
Church (Atlanta), and Martin Luther
King III’s father.
Oprah
Winfrey was a parishioner at the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Barack
Obama was a parishioner at the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago), and the candidate for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
African
American Religious Leadership Committee was an advisory group for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Jeremiah A.
Wright Jr. was a member of the African
American Religious Leadership Committee, Harold Washington’s adviser, and is a senior pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Trumpeter
Newsmagazine is a publication for the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Louis Farrakhan
was awarded the 2007 Jeremiah Wright Jr.
Trumpeter award from the Trumpeter
Newsmagazine, the organizer for the Million
Man March, and the acting head for the Nation
of Islam.
Common
is a parishioner at the Trinity United
Church of Christ (Chicago), and Kanye
West is his producer.
Kanye
West is Common’s producer,
married to Kim Kardashian, and a William Morris Endeavor Entertainment
client.
Kim
Kardashian is married to Kanye West,
and a William Morris Endeavor
Entertainment client.
Ari
Emanuel is the co-CEO & director for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, and Rahm I. Emanuel’s brother.
Rahm
I. Emanuel is Ari Emanuel’s
brother, the Chicago (IL) mayor, a
member of the Commercial Club of Chicago,
and was the White House chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration.
Harold Washington
was a Chicago (IL) mayor, and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. was his adviser.
Richard
M. Daley was the Chicago (IL) mayor,
Michelle Obama was his staffer, Valerie B. Jarrett was his deputy chief
of staff, and is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Michelle
Obama was Mayor Richard M. Daley’s
staffer, and a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP, and a parishioner at the
Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Oprah
Winfrey was a parishioner at the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
R.
Eden Martin is counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Newton
N. Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr, and was Mayor Richard M. Daley’s deputy chief of staff.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think
tank), the Drum Major Institute for
Public Policy, the NAACP Legal
Defense & Educational Fund,
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society,
and is the founder & chairman for the Open
Society Foundations.
Andrea
Batista Schlesinger is the deputy director, U.S. programs for the Open Society Foundations, and was an executive
director at the Drum Major Institute for
Public Policy.
Martin
Luther King III is a director at the Drum
Major Institute for Public Policy, and Martin
Luther King Jr’s son.
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s
great uncle, Antoinette Cook Bush’s
stepfather, an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner,
a senior director at the NAACP Legal
Defense & Educational Fund, a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Antoinette Cook
Bush is Vernon E. Jordan Jr’s
stepdaughter, and was a partner at Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.
Michael A. Lawson
was a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom LLP, and is a trustee at Morehouse College.
Spike
Lee is an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner,
and married to Tonya Lewis Lee.
Spike Lee pays up for wrong-address tweet in Trayvon
Martin ...
Tonya Lewis Lee
is married to Spike Lee, and a
director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund.
Henry Louis
Gates Jr. is an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner,
the host for African American Lives,
a Harvard University professor, and
a director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund.
Harvard professor Henry Louis
Gates Jr. arrested outside his home, calls Cambridge police 'racist'
Charles J.
Ogletree Jr. is an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner,
a director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund, and was Barack
Obama’s college mentor.
Louis W. Sullivan
is an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner, and
was the president of the Morehouse
School of Medicine.
Eric H. Holder Jr.
was a trustee at the Morehouse School of
Medicine, and an intern at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
Morehouse
School of Medicine is a medical school at Morehouse College.
Billye
Aaron is a director emeritus at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and a trustee at Morehouse College.
William M. Lewis
Jr. is a co-chair emeritus for the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and a trustee at Morehouse College.
Andrew
J. Young is a senior director at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and a trustee at Morehouse College.
Otis
Moss III is a trustee at Morehouse
College, Otis Moss Jr’s son, and
a pastor at the Trinity United Church of
Christ (Chicago).
Oprah
Winfrey was a parishioner at the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Barack
Obama was a parishioner at the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago), and the candidate for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
African
American Religious Leadership Committee was an advisory group for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Jeremiah A.
Wright Jr. was a member of the African
American Religious Leadership Committee, Harold Washington’s adviser, and is a senior pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Trumpeter
Newsmagazine is a publication for the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Louis Farrakhan
was awarded the 2007 Jeremiah Wright Jr.
Trumpeter award from the Trumpeter
Newsmagazine, the organizer for the Million
Man March, and the acting head for the Nation
of Islam.
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