In recent years, one of the biggest internet trends has been ridiculously edited photos or party flyers featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Artificial Intelligence has made pictures of him even more outrageous, with Sexyy Red posting one on his national holiday — and later apologizing for doing so.
This past Monday (Jan. 20), the St. Louis rapper shared an AI photo of herself and the late Black hero on X (formerly Twitter). The picture showed them embracing as if they were slow dancing, and its background looked like they were possibly in a club. Social media users got a laugh out of it, as it was typical Sexyy behavior on the internet.
On Tuesday afternoon, however, Dr. Bernice King quoted the tweet and wrote, “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. Please delete.” The 26-year-old artist was receptive and responded “You ain’t wrong, never meant to disrespect your family my apologies. Just [reposted] something I saw that I thought was innocent” with a prayer hands emoji before deleting her original tweet.
“Respectfully, why do you find this to be disrespectful?” one user asked Dr. King in Red’s defense. “Why all of this energy towards Sexyy Red yet I haven’t seen you voice anything towards any of those ATL club fliers with MLK (who are actually profiting off the image) or towards others who have reposted similar memes?”
Dr. King received so many similar replies — with many suggesting she was condescending toward Sexyy — that she felt the need to follow her initial request with some clarity.
“Please don’t project your thoughts onto me. I don’t believe Sexyy Red to be a ‘degenerate,’ ‘ghetto,’ or ‘trash,’” King wrote. “I have spoken out in the past about the use of and comparison to either of my parents to denigrate other people. I just don’t understand this type of use of my father’s image (on #MLKDay, no less), in a way that does not convey what we know to be true about his service and sacrifice.”
Dr. Bernice King also directly replied to Sexyy Red and accepted her apology. “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,” she wrote. “I hope you understand my concerns about the image. 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).”
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