Project 21, a black-conservative think tank and cultural watchdog, lambasted basketball player LeBron James for his endorsement of a company that sells pro-Confederate merchandise.
The uniforms for James’s team, the Los Angeles Lakers, feature the logo of online retailer Wish as part of a $12-14 million promotional arrangement.
Lakers Chief Operating Officer Tim Harris called Wish “a company that shares our commitment to giving back to the community.”
But a Project 21 investigation revealed an array of items sold by Wish that celebrated the Confederate battle flag and prominent generals including Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
“I wish LeBron wasn’t a hypocrite, but I guess it’s part of being on the woke left,” said Project 21 member Richard Holt, according to a press release.
“But let’s be even more honest here,” Holt continued. “The NBA, LeBron and all the other social justice warriors are ultimately in it for the money.”
James has been a vocal advocate of black-liberation causes including the Black Lives Matter movement, and he has routinely thrown his support behind cancel-culture-driven protests and boycotts that serve its Marxist agenda.
Most recently, he drew criticism for doxxing the name of the Columbus, Ohio police officer who shot and killed crazed teenager Ma’Khia Bryant as she was trying to stab an acquaintance.
Yet, James and others in the NBA have remained mum when their own financial livelihood is at stake—refusing, for example, to criticize cash-cow China over its multitude of human-rights abuses.
“I don’t think they really care about you and me if there’s a dollar to be made,” noted Holt. “So they can keep promoting state’s rights through Wish sales all they want—maybe when the South rises again they can make money on the Robert E. Lee baseball hats.”
While Lee and others have long been celebrated for their virtue and valor, the South’s support of slavery made them a key target during race riots last year following the death of George Floyd.
Several century-old monuments were razed—either forcibly by mobs or voluntarily by Democrat officials—in states like Virginia, where much of the Civil War’s fighting occurred.
Last month, Virginia’s racially conflicted Gov. Ralph Northam joined city officials in the state capital of Richmond to unveil a plan to dig up and desecrate the grave of Gen. A.P. Hill, a Virginia native killed during the war for whom a nearby US Army base is named.
“I think we have drawn this out as long as we can and longer than it should have been,” City Councilman Mike Jones said about Hill’s disinterment. “I know that so many Richmonders are just ready for this saga to be over so we can put a pin in this portion of our painful past.”
Jones called the grave site a “painful trinket of white supremacy.”
