A young Chiefs fan maligned as wearing “blackface” after putting on a Native American headdress and face paint for an NFL game is actually Native American.
An article from Deadspin’s Carron J. Phillips accused the young child, Holden Armenta, of wearing racist blackface in an article titled, “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress.” The child was wearing the team’s colors of red and black and his headdress resembled the team’s 1960s and early ’70s logo. (RELATED: Kansas City Chiefs Fans Get In A Massive Brawl In Absurd Viral Video)
“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,” Phillips wrote.
The boy’s apparent grandfather, Raul Armenta, is a business committee member at the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. According to a short bio of the man, he spent much of his childhood visiting “relatives” who lived on the Native American reservation.
This is Deadspin senior editor and writer Carron J. Phillips.
Yesterday, he wrote a defamatory hit on a white boy for wearing face paint (his team colors). He even used a deceptive camera angle to make it look like blackface.
A glance at his past writings show that his entire… pic.twitter.com/2qabPBFzLW
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 28, 2023
A 2014 article recounts a shark attack survived by Raul Armenta, and confirms that he is Bubba’s father and Holden’s grandfather.
Holden’s great-grandfather died in 2012, according to a news report, and was an elder of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.