#BlackLivesMatter Activist Shaun King Confirms Biracial Heritage

Activist and blogger Shaun King stated on Thursday that the man listed on his birth certificate, a white man, is not his biological father. King wrote in the Daily Kos that his mother, a white woman, conceived him with a Black man.

“My mother and I have discussed her affair,” King wrote. “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.”

King’s column came hours after MSNBC correspondent Joy Ann Reid reported that King told her the same thing. CNN host Don Lemon had reported on Wednesday that a relative of King’s told him that he was white.

The post also followed days of accusations from conservative media outlets that he was lying about being biracial for his own benefit.

“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,” King wrote on Thursday. “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.”

King said the allegations were followed by death threats against himself and his family, but vowed that it would not distract him from his advocacy efforts against police use of excessive force in Black communities.

“I believe it is the pre-eminent civil rights issue of modern America and that, together, we can fight against it effectively,” he stated.