Bernice King comes to Sexyy Red’s defense amid backlash surrounding the rapper’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day post.
The family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has had enough of the AI-generated images of the late patriarch and civil rights leader — something Sexyy Red may have just learned the hard way.
On Monday, the 26-year-old rapper posted two AI-generated images of herself and King on her X account. One image included her dancing closely in front of the civil rights icon, and the other showed her walking alongside King and other civil rights leaders. While the posts received over 50,000 likes from social media users, at least one person was not a fan of the AI-generated images.
The following day, King’s daughter, Bernice King, responded to the initial posts, calling them “deplorable.”
“This is intentionally distasteful, dishonoring, deplorable, and disrespectful to my family and my father, who is not here to respond himself because he was assassinated for working for your civil and human rights and to end war and poverty,” she wrote in her reply on Tuesday lambasting the post.
Just a few hours later, the “Get it Sexy” rapper, born Janae Nierah Wherry, responded with an apology.
“You ain’t wrong,” she began. “Never meant to disrespect your family my apologies. Just resposted something I saw that I thought was innocent.”
Sexyy Red deleted her post as the exchange quickly led to backlash online, with many bashing the rapper for the post. Bernice seemingly accepted the apology and even came to her defense in a lengthy response.
“Thank you for your apology, which I sincerely accept. Please know that it was not my intention that you be denigrated. I value you as a human being,” Bernice wrote.
“I hope you understand my concerns about the image,” she continued. “I know that my father has become a bit of a caricature to the world and that his image is often used with no regard to his family, his sacrificial work, or to the tragic, unjust way in which he died (a state-sanctioned assassination).”
She added how she “unfortunately” has to “regularly challenge the disregard” her father receives and implored others to “imagine what it would feel like to see their deceased, murdered father repurposed for party fliers, unjust legislation” and more. The civil rights leader’s daughter closed her response by wishing “all the best” to Sexyy Red.
Many responding in the comments began to denigrate the 20-something, calling her “ghetto” and “trashy.” Bernice King added a reply in the comments taking anyone using the moment as an opportunity to bash Red to task.
“Please don’t project your thoughts onto me. I don’t believe Sexyy Red to be a “degenerate,” “ghetto,” or “trash.” I have spoken out in the past about the use of and comparison to either of my parents to denigrate other people,” she wrote.
She further stated that her only attempt was to call out the use of her father’s image in a way that “does not convey” what the world has come to know is true about him and his legacy.
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