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Activist Shaun King has been outed by the conservative media as a white man, but he’s maintained that he’s never lied about his race. Raised in the the small town of Versailles, Kentucky, King has been one of the activists at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement since Ferguson. The Morehouse graduate and recipient of an Oprah Winfrey scholarship, King was assailed by conservative media once it was found out that the biological father listed on his birth certificate was White. King was also accused of making more of a racially motivated high school beating than it was, although he says he was severely injured in both that an in a car accident later on.

After days of speculation, and a lengthy Twitter post that didn’t explicitly address his race,  King finally addressed the controversy in full, saying that his biological father was a light-skinned Black male, and that he was the product of an affair. He said he’s discussed this with his mother, now a senior citizen and that none of his siblings have the same father. Much of Black Twitter’s most serious activist community has come to King’s defense, although racist trolls and conservative race baiters have had a field day with the story.

King says that his family history, like many people’s is complicated but that he’s known all his life that he was Black and lived that experience in every way. Today he is married to a Black woman, Rai King, with whom he has children and took to his defense to day on her Facebook page to say her husband has never lied about his race. 

King writes:

I refuse to speak in detail about the nature of my mother’s past, or her sexual partners, and I am gravely embarrassed to even be saying this now, but I have been told for most of my life that the white man on my birth certificate is not my biological father and that my actual biological father is a light-skinned black man. My mother and I have discussed her affair. 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. All of my siblings and I have different parents. I’m actually not even sure how many siblings I have.

Read King’s full essay HERE. 

Shaun King, his wife and family.

Shaun King (right) as a baby

Do you think he’s telling the truth? Tell us!

(Photos: Instagram and Facebook)

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