The NBA's LeBron James is sidelined with an ankle injury but it has left more time for taking shots on Twitter about social justice causes.
LeBron tweeted Monday night:
"I fueled the wrong conversation about Ma'Khia Bryant and I owe it to her and this movement to change it. Thank you @fabiolacineas for educating us about Ma’Khia and her story and why this needs to be about her. https://vox.com/22406055/makhia-bryant-police-shooting-columbus-ohio #sayhername #Blacklivesmatter"
The story pointed out the issues and circumstances that led to Bryant, 16, being shot dead by a white police officer while wielding a knife and lunging at another Black woman. James lamented he failed speak out for the troubled Black girl and had instead pointed the conversation at the officer.
James tweeted later Monday:
"Protect our Young Black Women & Men!"
His tweet comes after he was forced to delete a tweet last month after Bryant's April 20 death, calling for prosecution of the officer who shot her, but ignoring the fact he was saving the lives of Black women who might have been stabbed.
James' now-deleted tweet posted a photo of Columbus police Officer Nicholas Reardon with the message: "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY."
The shooting came on the same day Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in the May 2020 death of George Floyd.
The May 1 Vox story James linked to, "Why they’re not saying Ma’Khia Bryant’s name," painted Bryant's knife-wielding as a victim of her circumstances and how her death failed to bring "cries for justice" as Floyd's death did.
The story suggests the officer, in his split-second, life-saving decision-making, could have made a perfect decision that would have kept everyone alive.
"People will say, 'I'm really sad this whole scenario happened, but had she not had that knife': That becomes the 'but,' the qualifier, the caveat," Ohio State University African-American women's history professor Treva Lindsey told Vox. "And too often we have a caveat when it comes to defending, protecting, and caring for Black girls."
But law enforcement officers have defended Reardon's actions in his split-second decision-making to save lives of other Black women in the potential stabbing.
"No officer wants to take a life, but I'll tell you one thing: That officer saved a life and he's a hero," the LAPD's Jamie McBride told Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" last week, slamming James as "one of the biggest hypocrites out there."
The Bryant death remains under investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, while Reardon remains on administrative leave, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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