Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, criticizes activist Shaun King for allegedly fundraising without her consent (again) and says he ‘robbed’ her of the death of her 12-year-old son, who was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer in 2014
Rice’s comments came after King published a podcast titled “Ep. 469 – I spoke to Samaria Rice this past week,” which now appears to be unavailable on his website, The North Star.
Back in 2015 which was not long after Tamir Rice had been killed, Shaun King began raising money for the family but conveniently forgot to let the family know.
Timothy Kucharski had been one of two attorneys representing the Rice family for several weeks when he got a call from a friend in early December, asking about an online fundraiser he was seeing in the Rice name.
Created on the Web site YouCaring.com, thousands of dollars were pouring into a fund for the Rice family. But Kucharski had never heard of King — one of the fund’s primary organizers — and Rice’s mother told him that she was unaware of the fundraiser.
“Shaun and the word ‘accountability’ should never appear in the same sentence,” The North Star’s former editor in chief, Keisha N. Blain—who one former employee told me was King’s staunchest ally at the company—wrote in a tweet thread. “So many people warned me about him and I didn’t listen. But I learned through experience—not rumours or innuendos but real life experience with a liar & a fraud.”
Blain went on to write that she was “thinking of financial matters when I wrote the tweet (since he has always framed them as rumours and not facts),” and added that there “is nothing to celebrate about my collaboration with Shaun and The North Star. It was a f*cked up situation from beginning to end. And there’s a lot I simply cannot say because I signed an NDA. I am just owning my shit and trying to do better and move forward. That’s all.”
Over 100 years ago Booker Washington foresaw and warned about people like Shaun King but he could have never guessed in a million years that some of these race-baiters would be white. Talk about being the poster child for a quote.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” ―Booker T. Washington 1911
He is the brother of another (white) mother of Rachel Dolezal. When Dolezal was exposed as a fraud she was universally shamed and relegated to obscurity and ridicule. Why hasn’t this happened to King to the same universal degree? Is it solely because he is a man or could there be other nebulous reasons at play? It is hard to believe that in 2021 anyone in their right mind would choose to pay any attention to Shaun King or worse yet donate.
So here is one more gentle reminder not to give Shaun King money.
