The astroturf-y Black Conservatives Fund has injected themselves into what is one of the ugliest, most racist and personal smear jobs against an African-American activist I've seen in recent times.
After Breitbart News published a hit job on BLM activist Shaun King claiming he's really not a black guy at all but instead a white dude playing Rachel Dolezal games, all hell broke loose. The icing on the cake is Dan Backer's little Ben Carson PAC offering a $25,000 reward for someone to locate Shaun King's biological father to verify that he is indeed, black.
WTF is that all about?
Who died and elected Breitbart News racial purity arbiters?
Breitbart News, that's who. Oh, and the echo chamber at The Blaze and The Daily Caller, too.
Then CNN's Don Lemon got in on the action, just so a private matter could be a national one. Way to go, CNN. Congratulations. Worse yet, they titled their contribution to the complete invasion of his mother's privacy this way: "Is Black Lives Matter activist really white?" Their article is less provocatively titled, but no less invasive. Linking to the Breitbart article, they closed with the question about whether it really mattered at all. Check out the ending, where they still suggest the man is lying about whether he's black or not.
If King is lying about his race, does it matter?
Attorney and legal commentator Mel Robbins says it does because it becomes a distraction to Black Lives Matter.
"It matters because (there are conservatives) that would like to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement at all costs," she said. "Every time somebody does this and they're not punished for it, it actually has a negative impact on the bigger movement."
CNN legal commentator Areva Martin agreed, saying the controversy is taking the focus off of the issues the Black Lives Matter movement cares about, like police brutality.
And if King has been lying about his race, Martin said that's extremely harmful to Black Lives Matter.
"This movement cannot be sustained if you have leaders who are not credible," she said. "The public is not tolerant of people who misrepresent themselves. You have to be who you say you are."
King sought to redirect attention away from questions about his race and toward his actual work.
"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," he wrote.
This is a smear that a national cable news network is now complicit in spreading. Congratulations, CNN.
What is this all about anyway?
Here's the deal. King's mother had more than one partner back in the late 70's and early 80's. She was married several times. The man named on King's birth certificate as his father was her husband at the time, but not King's father. Don't go all woggly-kneed on me at this disclosure. Anyone who lived during that time knows it was a free-for-all that didn't really slow down until the AIDS epidemic. Men and women screwed, committed adultery, and switched partners a lot. Open marriages were a thing.
None of this has any bearing on whether or not Shaun King is a passionate and effective advocate for his cause, you understand. It's merely Breitbart's way of making sure he's distracted enough to take a time out and have to write about a part of his life that should be private. He's not an elected official, he's not a clergyman, and he's sure as hell not someone who should be subject to this kind of a smear.
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.
They dug up the man's birth certificate. Think about that. These fcks went to all the trouble to actually go and dig up a man's birth certificate so they could write a story about how that Black Lives Matter guy is a white fraud.
That's sick.
Ali Akbar makes demands he's got no business making
The Black Conservatives Fund has long been a smarmy outfit, which has now been tasked with the job of raising a lot of money to pay a lot of consultants a lot of money so they can do things like put out a bounty for Shaun King's natural father. Of course, in order to do that, they'd have to further invade his mother's privacy.
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.
Read his entire essay. You'll discover that he might not even know the name of his biological father and why the fck is this anyone's business anyway?
Karl Rove acolyte and serial scammer Ali Akbar is putting out the call, because that's what he does best -- screw with people's lives. Never mind his own felonious past and his own frauds, because he'd rather put bounties out for other people's family ties. This is how sick and disgusting Akbar is:
“Black lives do in fact matter, which is why a leading conservative African American organization, BlackConservativesFund.com, is offering $25,000 to Black Lives Matter causes if an activist under controversy can authenticate his claim, that he is in fact, black,” the organization said in a press release.
“Shaun King has bullied other blacks—conservatives blacks—who don’t share 100% of his political views. I get it. That’s the ugly side of politics,” said Fund advisor Ali Akbar. “But to steal the identity of a people who are crying out for reform—that’s just fraud.”
Among the ways they suggest that King could prove his heritage is to “produce his alleged African American father or cooperate with a DNA test.”
Fck you, Akbar. No one needs to bow and scrape before you or anyone associated with you. I looked up the Black Conservatives Fund FEC reports after I saw this tonight, and I'm here to say that if you want to see fraud, look at that report.
Out of the 80 pages of donors listed, only two had verifiable addresses, for example. The rest of them had street addresses listed that were in completely different cities, leaving the entire report with no integrity at all. None. Zero. Nearly every donor is a senior citizen.
In some cases, donors names were missing. No occupations or places of employment for any donors were listed, which is required reporting on FEC reports. I annotated my copy of the report which you are free to page through to see my notes on obvious problems and deficiencies. I didn't annotate the fields for occupation or employer, since they're all blank.
Ali Akbar is a con artist. I'm sure Shaun King knows that, and will act accordingly. He knows what Akbar is doing with Breitbart's full blessing, and he knows exactly why:
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.
While Shaun King does that, I think I'll just keep digging into the Black Conservatives Fund, asking the FEC about when I can expect an amendment to their bogus filing that gives the names and addresses of actual donors with real names and real addresses.
In the meantime, please do feel free to have a gander at how these people lie, cheat and steal no matter what they're doing. They can't even manage to get an FEC report right. (The notes start around page 13.)
Black Conservatives Fund 6-30-2015 FEC Report
Update:
Markos has something to say about this too, and he's not holding back.
So fuck everyone who has gone after Shaun. Fact is, they are accomplishing nothing but exposing the ugliness in their hearts. Shaun will continue to shine a light on the issues he's focused on, and we will continue to support Shaun in his efforts. In fact, we're doubling down by staffing up in this area. So if the intent was to hamper the Black Lives Matter movement ... well, in this case, it has only redoubled our resolve to support it.
