A black conservative group is offering to pay the activist organization Black Lives Matter $25,000 if Shaun King can prove that his father is black.
“Black Conservatives Fund PAC is offering $25,000 to help organize #BlackLivesMatter related events and rallies if Shaun King can and will produce his alleged African American father or cooperate with a DNA test,” reads a press release from the group.
King’s race became the subject of widespread intrigue on Wednesday after Breitbart News published the 35-year-old activist’s birth certificate. The form listed King’s parents, both of whom are white. That despite King’s past claims that his father is black.
That report came after The Daily Caller reported last month that King’s claim that he was the victim of a brutal 1995 hate crime attack in high school was not supported by a police report or the police detective who investigated the matter. King has stated that he was beaten by a dozen “rednecks” and left for dead in the hate attack. But the police report and the detective indicated that King was beat up in a one-on-one fight. (RELATED: Leading Ferguson Activist’s Hate Crime Claim Disputed By Police Report, Detective)
TheBlaze obtained witness statements earlier this week which suggested that the fight occurred after King threatened a girl over a broken CD. The website also obtained a copy of the police report from the 1995 incident. On it, King’s race is not redacted. He is listed as white.
King, who rose to national prominence in the wake of the police-involved shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. last year, is a social justice blogger at the left-leaning website Daily Kos. Prior to his activism, he was a pastor at an Atlanta church and founded several online fundraising websites. His involvement in those organizations has also led to accusations of fraud.
Until Wednesday, King had ignored questions from the press and on social media about the 1995 high school incident and about whether he is black. He finally responded when he became a trending topic on Twitter.
In a series of tweets, King dismissed the accusations against him as part of a right-wing conspiracy to tear him down because of his work against police brutality.
9. Now, here is where it gets full-fledged white supremacist conspiracy theory crazy. It's wild.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 19, 2015
King linked to Facebook statements from two of his former classmates who said they were witnesses to the 1995 beating and that they believed King was the victim of a hate crime. King also danced around the questions about his race, saying only that his family “is one big mess.”
25. First off, the key facts about my biological relatives are all wrong. They tried, but my family, like many of yours, is one big mess.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 19, 2015
According to CNN’s Don Lemon, King has described himself to the news anchor as bi-racial but declined on Wednesday to confirm for him that his father is black.
Comparing King to Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane NAACP president who was caught lying about being black earlier this year, the Black Conservatives Fund said that King has “used his platform to bully countless African Americans whom he disagreed with politically.”
“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 Ali Akbar, a senior adviser for the Black Conservatives Fund. “But to steal the identity of a people who are crying out for reform — that’s just fraud.”
“I’m biracial and I’m really concerned with left-wing activists like Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King calling people like me ‘Uncle Tom’ while they’re not even black!” Akbar added, calling King an unnecessary distraction.
The group is giving King 24 hours to prove that his father is black.