Happy Black History Month: The Proud Boys Just Lost Their Name to a Black Church

The white nationalist organization can no longer use its name or sell merchandise without the consent of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Screenshot via SBS Dateline/YouTube

On the third day of Black History Month, a white nationalist group that swears it’s not a white nationalist group despite being a demonstrably safe space for white nationalists lost its rights to its name to a Black church that its members attacked in 2020 when they took down its Black Lives Matter banner and burned it. (Which historically sounds like something a white nationalist group would do, but whatever.)

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier ruled that the Proud Boys can no longer represent itself as the Proud Boys or sell any Proud Boys merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, which won a $2.8 million default judgment against the group in June 2023.

Imagine that: A group of rabid and perpetually aggrieved white men who attacked a Black church and lynched its BLM banner now has to ask that church’s permission any time it wants to use its own name. I mean, it’s not a huge victory for Black people, especially considering everything else going on under the current administration but between this and white people all over the internet dissolving in a vat of their own acidic white tears over Beyoncé winning the Grammy for Best Country Album — I’ll take it.

OK, so not everybody in the Proud Boys is a white man. The organization’s former leader, Enrique Tarrio, is Afro-Cuban, which basically means he’s probably a day away from tattooing “MAGA” on his forehead so ICE doesn’t come asking him for his freedom papers.

Anyway, Tarrio is not happy with Judge Bosier’s decision.

According to the New York Times, Tarrio — who was serving a 22-year prison sentence for his part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot before he was pardoned by President Donald Trump, the riot’s chief instigator — released a lengthy statement in which he said the church should have its nonprofit status revoked and the judge should be impeached.

“Their actions are a betrayal of justice,” Tarrio wrote. “I hold in contempt any motions, judgments, and orders issued against me.” (This is the kind of thing you write when you’re dusting off your legal degree from the prestigious institution of Law & Order Episodes I Only Half-Watched University.)

I don’t know what Tarrio is so mad about. How much could the Proud Boys' name be worth anyway? It was just a few years ago that Tarrio was reportedly out here selling Black Lives Matter T-shirts because it turned out the Proud Boys were a bunch of broke beyotches and he needed to raise extra funds for the organization. (Apparently, white supremacy can get you your choice of president, but it won’t put bland, seasonless food on the MAGA table.)

“Proud Boys” is a stupid-ass name anyway. It sounds like a spin-off of The Proud Family when they’re actually a spin-off of South Park. (You just have to imagine the Proud Boys in flannel shirts and red mullets shouting, “DEY TOOK UR JOBS!” Actually — you don’t really have to imagine anything.)

I guess the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Aryan Brotherhood and all the other really bad-ass white supremacist group names were already taken, so the Proud Boys was scraping the bottom of the angry and insecure Caucasian barrel to find its moniker. They were probably pissed at the Patriot Front for taking the last good name even though that name sounds like it was the original title of the first Captain America comic but it got scrapped because, even in 1941, that shit was lame as hell.

I just imagine there was a group of middle-aged white men sitting in a basement making custom tiki torches while trying to figure out a name when one of their mothers walked in and said, “Gosh, I’m really proud of you boys” — and the rest was history.

But you know what? Since I'm often pretty rough on white-and-eternally-fragile America, I'm going to be a good DEI neighbor and help the boys who are proud but can no longer legally represent themselves as such find a new title.

*rubs chin*

Let's see. What can we come up with?

Damn, it's too bad “Soggy Bottom Boys” has already been taken by a much cooler group of wayward white men, because that would have been the perfect new name for the Proud Boys as I'm 99.9% sure none of them know how to wipe properly.

Anyway, what else is there?

How about the “Stand Back and Stand By” Boys?

Y'all remember when Trump almost imploded into himself in 2020 after being challenged by the media to outright denounce white supremacist groups, and all the commander-in-very-fine-people-on-both-sides could muster up was a call for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” It was an indication that Trump didn’t want to lose white support by dumping on white supremacists — his political bread and butter — and it was also the greatest advertisement the Proud Boys could have hoped for.

“Stand Back and Stand By Boys” is a little wordy, though.

How about PHAT Boys? P.H.A.T, as in, the “Prehistoric Haters Acting Tough” Boys, or the “Phallic Humping Atop Trump” Boys, or the “Punk Hoe Alabaster Tiki-torch” Boys, or the “Peckerwood Hipster Antifa Tracker” Boys, or the “Pale and Hostile After Thought” Boys?

Nah, let's scrap that one, too. We're not going to disrespect the OG Fat Boys like that — not during Black History Month.

In fact, what am I even doing? I can't be out here expending Black intellectual labor to help the Proud Boys re-Klan — I mean, rebrand.

Yeah, let me just mind my Black business and let the Broke Boys pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Oh shit, wait — the “PO’ BOYS!”

Nah, that's taken, too.

OK, I'm out. Happy Black History Month, y'all.