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May 2017 Freep coverage at top left is shown with spring 2016 articles in Huffington Post, Essence and The Detroit News.
Snoop Dogg, who turns 46 next week, should know by now that posting unchecked claims can backfire.
The past-generation rapper and Wrestlemania hanger-on embarrasses himself by sharing the false statement below on Twitter and Instagram. His claim that "mainstream media" ignores young black chess champs from Detroit stirs outrage among followers, though some note that white players typically don't earn media splashes.
"No chess team does, Snoop. Don't go down the BS road," says one reply.
Others snap up his racial bias bait, with almost 200,000 likes on Instagram in a day and about 5,300 on Twitter, where it has more than 2,000 retweets.
"Neither did the lady mathematicians working for NASA," tweets Mike Bednarz of Lockport, Ill., citing the 1960s history recounted last year in "Hidden Figures," a book and Oscar-nominated film.
In reality, a few seconds on Google confirm what's shown above:
At least two national publications -- Huffington Post and Essence -- and both Detroit dailies report on 2016 and 2017 U.S. titles for chess whizzes at University Prep Science & Math Elementary and Middle School, a charter program. (Essence, which says it's "for and about black women," may not be mainstream in Snoop's view -- though's the magazine is a year older than him and has a circulation above 1 million.)
Detroit News coverage appeared a day after local middle school girls earned trophies in Chicago in the under-14 category 18 months ago. In a 10-paragraph article by Mark Hicks, head coach Kevin Fite calls it "a significant win" and adds:
"We've won a lot of other national tournaments, but we’ve never won this one. . . . We were considerably the underdog."
Last May, the Detroit Free Press published three photos with news of two first-place finishes by the same school at a tournament in Nashville, Tenn. "These amazing students are a shining example of what is possible with hard work and a passion for the game of chess," the charter school's chief executive is quoted as saying.
Back on Twitter, under Snoop's inflammatory misfire, the 17-time Grammy Award loser is called out pointedly:
When you view the world thru the lens of skin color, every action out there is some sorta slight.
— Dale Toney (@daletoney) October 9, 2017
Be bigger than this Snoopdog pic.twitter.com/VnyeUeLunk
