Kobe Bryant Changes Tune: Trayvon Martin Was Wronged

After his comments in a New Yorker profile in which he criticized those who came to Trayvon Martin’s defense before the facts came out just because Martin was black went viral on Thursday, Los Angeles Lakers superstar walked back that sentiment a bit, saying he believed that Trayvon Martin was “wronged.”

On Twitter, the Black Mamba tweeted, “THATS my opinion and thats what I believe the FACTS showed. The system did not work.”

“I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American,” Bryant told the New Yorker when asked about the situation in a profile piece published this week. “That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well… then don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.”

As Breitbart Sports reported, Bryant was called everything from “cornball” to “jerk” for those remarks:

Jim Brown tells the New Yorker, “[Kobe] is somewhat confused about culture, because he was brought up in another country.” Jamilah King at Colorlines lambasted Bryant for this “stingy insistence on clinging to a ‘post-racial’ identity, this very old, conservative notion that black people should not be treated differently in this country–despite all of the evidence, like Martin’s death, that they are.” A piece at The Urban Daily (ellipses in original) declared, “Over the span of Kobe Bryant’s career….we’ve seen him do and say some very smug, cavalier and even cornball things at times but the comments that he made regarding the Miami Heat’s support after Trayvon Martin was killed…by far takes the cake!” The piece calls Bryant a “jerk” and in strange, non sequitur fashion–sorry for being “smug” and a “jerk”–dubs his opinion “beyond reproach.”