Shaun King is one of those cats who grew up very Black identified and apparently didn't correct folks when they though he was a BM.
With his wife.
In HS;
Nearly the same media story as Ms. Dolezal, but I'm not aware of him ever saying he was Black, even if he did represent himself that way.
Look, if Black folks aren't choosing to lead these movements, next man up.
The Abolitionist movement in the 1800s was predominately made up of WHite folk.
In the 1960s and '70s, many of the folks behind the scenes and many of the foot soldiers were multicultural.
About Shaun King, he's from Kentucky and something about him looks 'different'. The man shown in photos as his father doesn't look like him IMO.
Mr. King's explanation;
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.
All of my siblings and I have different parents. I’m actually not even sure how many siblings I have. It is horrifying to me that my most personal information, for the most nefarious reasons, has been forced out into the open and that my private past and pain have been used as jokes and fodder to discredit me and the greater movement for justice in America. I resent that lies have been reported as truth and that the obviously racist intentions of these attacks have been consistently downplayed at my expense and that of my family.
His race ultimately isn't that important, but for a grown man to call his mother promiscuous to promote a lie, that's extreme to me.
Which means I sort of buy his racial history explanation.
So many mixed people are running around in Kentucky passing BOTH ways.
Muhammad Ali, a Kentucky native, has a White great-grandfather.
End of the day, what matters most to me is his how you live your life impacting the lives of others, not skin tone.