Shaun King and Samaria Rice/Photo courtesy of New York Post
Activist Shaun King has run afoul of Samaria Rice again, and the tweets rained down like a tsunami. King recently publicized a conversation he and Rice had about donations he solicited for her late son. According to statements made by Rice, King sounded like a liar of epic proportions.
There is a backstory. In May, Samaria Rice sat down for an interview with The Cut. In the interview, she mentioned that certain activists used Black death, like that of her son Tamir, to self-elevate themselves. She mentioned King by name when he raised $60,000 in donations for Tamir without her consent.
At the time, King maintained that he never raised funds for any family without their consent.
According to Newsweek, however, that may not be true.
“Well, we talked, and everything that was said was very toxic and uncomfortable for me to hear that you raised additional money and then say you did not want… to bother me,” Rice said in an Instagram post.
That statement contradicts King’s statement that he does not fundraise without a family’s consent.
In fact, King acknowledged that he “left her [Samaria Rice] alone” for the past seven years while simultaneously fundraising for her son.
On his website, The North Star, King posted a podcast episode where he detailed a conversation that he and Rice had.
“She acknowledged that she was aware that I had written articles about Tamir across the years and had raised money for her family, but it was in that part of the conversation that I truly came to understand a central mistake that I had made with her, ” King said.
He detailed the history of efforts to raise donations for Tamir and alleged that people had lied to Rice about what he has done in the past. He said he apologized to her for assuming that the people around her were doing right by her.
Wow.
Many people in the Black community believe Shaun King to be a fraud of sorts. First, there was a question about his race. The Morehouse graduate maintains that he is biracial and that a birth certificate that classified him as white was the product of his mother covering up an affair.
Even Samaria Rice addressed this accusation in her most recent statement against him, saying, “God will deal with you, White man.”
Secondly, many people have doubted King and his true intentions about the Black liberation movement.
The tweets were ablaze once Samaria Rice made the Instagram post.
Black tweets and receipts are usually all that’s needed to call a fraud a fraud. Samaria Rice is still a grieving mother, and for Shaun King’s sake, we would like to hope this is one big misunderstanding. But, it doesn’t seem that way.