The parents of a young boy accused of racism are reportedly threatening to sue the left-wing sports blog, Deadspin, and the reporter who initially made the accusations.
Deadspin senior writer Carron Phillips misleadingly accused the child, Holden Armenta, of wearing blackface to a Kansas City Chiefs game for having one side of his face painted black to cheer on the team. He said the child’s headdress and face paint were hateful toward black people and Native Americans in his Nov. 27 article titled, “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress.”
Armenta’s parents, Shannon and Raul, hired Clare Locke LLP to demand a retraction of Phillips’ story and threatened legal action against the writer, Deadspin, its owner G/O Media and Great Hill Partners, according to a letter obtained by NewsNation.
“These Articles, posts on X, and photos about Holden and his parents must be retracted immediately. It is not enough to quietly remove a tweet from X or disable the article from Deadspin’s website. You must publish your retractions and issue an apology to my clients with the same prominence and fanfare with which you defamed them,” the letter reads, according to NewsNation.
Shannon has been outspoken on Facebook about the accusations made about her son, further revealing last week her son is Native American. The boy’s grandfather, Raul Armenta, is a business committee member for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians tribe, according to a short biography.
Phillips has yet to retract his accusations against Armenta and initially doubled down on the article in a now-deleted tweet. (RELATED: We Thought The Deadspin Story Calling A Child Super-Fan Racist Couldn’t Implode Any Worse…And Then It Did)
“For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument it makes it even worse,” the tweet said.
In the piece, Phillips accused the child of purposely finding a way to “hate black people and the Native Americans at the same time.” He then accused the National Football League (NFL) of allowing Armenta to display “racism and hate” at games.
“The answers to all of those questions lead back to the NFL,” Phillips wrote. “While it isn’t the league’s responsibility to stop racism and hate from being taught in the home, they are a league that has relentlessly participated in prejudice. If the NFL had outlawed the chop at Chiefs games and been more aggressive in changing the team’s name, then we wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s no place for a franchise to be called the ‘Chiefs’ in a league that’s already eradicated ‘Redskins,’” he added.
The senior writer immediately got community noted on Twitter and was called out by several prominent figures, including Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who said Phillips was “an unapologetic racist and a deceiver” in a Nov. 28 tweet.
Deadspin updated the piece to present the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians’ disapproval of “wearing regalia as part of a costume or participating in any other type of cultural appropriation.”
Phillips has a history of baselessly accusing people and organizations of racism. He claimed Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted a return to the “antebellum South” for banning critical race theory (CRT) in schools. He also accused Michael Lewis, the author of “The Blind Side,” of having a “slave owner’s mentality” for writing about a white family who adopted former NFL player Michael Oher.