The young Kansas City Chiefs fan who donned a headdress and face paint at a recent game and was subsequently smeared as racist by progressive media is of Native-American heritage, according to his mother.
On Monday, the left-wing publication Deadspin alleged that the football fan, identified as Holden Armenta, “ found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time.”
The headline urged the NFL to publicly condemn the boy for insulting African Americans with his “blackface” and Native-Americans by wearing the traditional tribal headdress.
In response, Shannon Armenta, the boy’s mother, wrote on Facebook: “This has nothing to do with the NFL. Also, CBS showed him multiple times and this is the photo people chose to blast to create division. He is Native American – just stop already.”
While the Deadspin article used an image which only showed the half of Armenta’s face that was painted black to substantiate the claim that he was wearing “blackface,” other images show that the other side of his face was painted red for the Chiefs.
Bubba Armenta, the child’s father, is the son of Raul Armenta, a business committee member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, according to local news story from 2014. The family lives in Santa Ynez, California, according to Facebook.
The mother’s Facebook feed showed other footage and photos from the game night, such as a close-up video of her son doing the tomahawk chop, with the players repeating the movement back to him. “The players even loved it!,” she wrote.
“Everyone asked to take a photo with him,” she wrote in another post. “He’s Native-American – people are ridiculous.”
The author of the original Deadspin article defended his attempt to shame the child in a social-media post.
“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,” writer Carron J. Phillips wrote on X. “Y’all are the ones who hate Mexicans but wear sombreros on Cinco.”
Phillips has not addressed the boy’s Native American heritage.
A community note attached to his post read, “Unlike the author, who is misleading the public for his own gain, the child is innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Armenta’s parents and grandfather did not immediately respond to request for comment. Nor did the Chumash Foundation.