Ahmaud Arbery‘s family says Kayne West‘s “White Lives Matter” T-shirt and his response to backlash condones the ideology behind the man’s killing and contradicts the rapper’s private stance on the Black Lives Matter movement.
West’s stunt comes as Arbery’s mother Wanda Cooper-James is in the midst of a civil battle with former and current local prosecutors and officers involved in her son’s case, according to court documents obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
The rapper-businessman and models in his Paris fashion show for his YZY brand strutted on the runway in the shirts on Monday. He also posed with equally controversial conservative commentator Candace Owens with matching slogans for a photo-op. It drew a slew of backlash from criticism.
However, the former presidential candidate doubled down on the message.
“Everyone know(s) that Black Lives Matter was a scam now it’s over you’re welcome,” West wrote in his Instagram story Monday before the post that was later deleted.
Arbery was chased, shot and killed by two white men in 2020 while jogging near his neighborhood in the Satilla Shores community just outside the coastal Georgia city of Brunswick.
The men claimed they thought Arbery was behind a string of burglaries in the area and were attempting a citizen’s arrest. Arbery’s murder and the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020.
That summer, West joined protesters in his hometown of Chicago. He donated $2 million to help Arbery, Taylor and Floyd’s families with legal fees in June 2020. He also created a college fund for Floyd’s daughter.
Arbery’s mother said the Paris Fashion week stunt was an “extreme disappointment” that sets the movement back.
“As a result of his display, ‘White Lives Matter’ started trending in the U.S., which would directly support and legitimize extremist behavior, [much] like the behavior that took the life of her son,” Cooper-James said in a statement from her attorney Lee Merritt. “That is the thing that Wanda and families like hers continue to fight against.”
“This mockery of the Black Lives Matter movement and his now denunciation of the movement as some sort of hoax flies directly in the face [of what he’s said,]” the statement added. “It’s confusing for her, it’s confusing for the families to receive his support privately, but publicly to set us all back.”
Cooper-James filed the lawsuit against her son’s killers, County District Attorney Jackie Johnson and current Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, Glynn County, Georgia, and two of its police officers in February 2021. However, the county, district attorneys and law enforcement officers have asked the court to dismiss the claims against them.
Arbery’s mother filed 11 claims against the defendants, including allegations that Officer Robert Rash conspired with Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan to kill her son. She alleges that the conspiracy was motivated by Arbery’s race, and the officers failed to protect her son and deprived him of due process. The claim also accuses Rash of Arbery’s wrongful death and the district attorneys of denying her access to courts. Barnhill is facing a libel claim.
Rash argued that Cooper-James has no evidence of his racial bias and he had no authority to deputize the men who chased Arbery, so her conspiracy claims are baseless. He also argued that he could not have predicted what would happen when he told the homeowner to contact Gregory McMichael “day or night when you get action on your camera.”
However, Cooper-James argued in her response filed last Wednesday that Rash had “extensive conversations” with the father-son duo about the burglaries and mentioned all the “Blacks” living in Satilla Shores, indicating that they were potential suspects.
The lawsuit also accused Officer Ricky Minshew of failing to render aid to Arbery when he arrived on the scene. However, the officer argued that the mother’s due process claim should be dismissed because a private citizen shot Arbery. Cooper-James argued that her son was in custody when Minshew arrived because his killers believed they had the authority and were encouraged to execute a citizen’s arrest.
The man’s mother also argued that the county ignored the culture in its police department that allowed the civil rights violations to thrive.
Cooper-James alleges that Johnson and Barnhill conspired to cover up the killers’ actions to stop them from being prosecuted. The former and current district attorneys had argued that members of the same organization couldn’t conspire among themselves.
