LAS VEGAS, Nev. (TND) — Elon Musk slammed a well known blog this week after one of its writers claimed a Kansas City Chiefs fan was wearing blackface at a football game over the weekend.
The fan, who appears to be a child, wore both a traditional Native American headdress and black and red face paint divided down the center of his face. Both elements were apparently intended to represent elements of the team’s mascot.
Nonetheless, a camera angle of the fan from the black-colored side of his face spread widely online, including on sports blog Deadspin, where a writer lambasted the fan for the attire.
It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once. But on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time,” Deadspin writer Carron J. Phillips wrote. “This is what happens when you ban books, stand against Critical Race Theory, and try to erase centuries of hate.”
Phillips’s piece became the subject of a community note correction on X, formerly Twitter, noting that the display was not blackface.
“The kid is not wearing ‘blackface,’” the note reads. “The Deadspin article is purposely deceiving. As several fans in attendance noted, the other half of his face is painted red.”
Musk cheered the correction as “another @CommunityNotes win exposing deception.”
Despite the pushback, Phillips stood by his reporting, writing “for the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse.
Y’all are the ones who hate Mexicans but wear sombreros on Cinco,” Phillips added.
This spurred another community note, reading “this Deadspin’s author failed to provide full context of the photo presented in the article, which is a boy wearing face paint of which the two colors (black and red) represent the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team.”
Deadspin did not respond to a request for comment from The National Desk (TND) Tuesday.
Phillips’s previous piece for Deadspin covered the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry football game, which saw Black interim head coach Sherrone Moore lead Michigan to a win. The journalist lamented the events, however, saying it was “sad” Moore was the first Black head coach in the rivalry.
“Don’t ever tell me that hiring decisions should be based on ‘the best person for the job,’ when the best person for the job continues to conveniently be white men,” Moore wrote.