Dwyane Wade has fielded a lot of hateful comments about his family, specifically about his 13-year-old transgender daughter Zaya Wade. The teenage girl recently came out as transgender and her parents, D-Wade and Gabrielle Union, have been incredibly supportive throughout her journey to self-discovery. Zaya spoke with Michelle Obama during a recent interview, which prompted another stream of disrespectful remarks from transphobes who don’t understand Zaya’s identity, including Boosie Badazz and J-Boog of B2K.
J-Boog recently stated that Zaya Wade’s interview with Michelle Obama was “demonic” and Lil Mama seemingly agreed on social media, earning a lot of backlash for her similar comments where she compared trans kids to dogs and cats. Dwyane Wade took time to address the recent hate against his daughter, touching on the comments they have seen on the latest episode of I Am Athlete.
“At the end of the day, what I’m dealing with people, I’m dealing with life and death,” said the basketball legend, setting up his response to Boosie. “It’s people in the transgender community that are getting killed. It’s kids that are murdering themselves, that are hanging themselves, they’re killing themselves because of something as simple as acceptance. Something as simple as unconditional love is not being given to these kids and I’ll be damned if my child gon’ be that person because of something as simple as me supporting who you are.”
He went on to call out Boosie and J-Boog directly, adding, “So, Boosie, all the people who got something to say, J-Boog, who just came out recently… all the people who got something to say about my kids, I thank you because you’re allowing the conversation to keep going forward because you know what? You might not have the answer today, I don’t have all the answers, but we’re growing from all these conversations. So I thank everybody for even hating and starting those conversations because those conversations are starting other conversations that we need to have. And that’s happening out there.”
What do you think of Dwyane Wade’s comments? Watch below at the 1:31:10 mark.