Ramses Ja and Quinton Ward, two Black activists who own the rights to “White Lives Matter,” are willing to sell the phrase to Kanye West for a hefty price tag.
As previously reported, Kanye sparked outrage in October when he debuted the “White Lives Matter” designs during the YZY Season 9 fashion show. Last week, Ja and Ward, who host the nationally syndicated radio show Civic Cipher, revealed they were gifted the trademark from an anonymous benefactor sometime in September, shortly before Kanye unveiled the shirts.
While speaking with TMZ this weekend, the radio hosts admitted that, though they’re not looking to sell the trademark, they’d surely consider doing so should someone propose an enticing offer. “Any potential buyer would have to come up with a $1 billion offer to even make them consider selling,” the outlet notes.
The news comes on the heels of Ja and Ward’s recent conversation with ABC News, in which the pair maintained that no one in America can legally sell any “White Lives Matter” products without receiving their authorization. In other words, anyone who was trying to generate a profit from the phrase would have to enter negotiations with the pair’s legal team, and potentially face a lawsuit.
“I recognize that one of two things could happen. Someone could come to our lawyer or us and say, ‘Hey, you have the exclusive right to make and sell those clothes in the United States of America. I would like to buy the trademark for millions of dollars,’” Ja told Capital B News. “If we were to sell that trademark, for whatever amount of money, we could donate that money to causes that we feel would benefit Black people, like the NAACP or Black Lives Matter organizations. Because, realistically, we cannot stop the shirts from being made right now. We can write cease and desist to people selling these shirts right now, but that is a big monster that requires teams of lawyers and thousands of dollars that we do not have.”