There's not many people who can handle racist remarks as calmly as 11-year-old Sebastien De La Cruz has. His performance of the "National Anthem" during Game 3 of the NBA Finals caused a social media firestorm. Almost immediately after performing a flawless version of the song he faced Internet backlash after people started posting comments about his race on Twitter.
According to the Houston Chronicle, there were some people who felt De La Cruz should not have been allowed to perform the song because of his Mexican descent even though he was born and raised in San Antonio. The website reports that following his performance "a barrage of tweets Tuesday night included insults and disparaging language aimed at Mexican American immigrants." Some of the comments even referenced the young boy wearing a Mariachi outfit while he sang.
Some of the negative tweets said things like: "You really had a Mexican sing the national anthem? Go to hell San Antonio" and "Is this the American National Anthem or the Mexican Hat Dance? Get this little kid out of here."
De La Cruz responded to the racist remarks saying that he was not going to let the comments get him down. He told the newspaper he thought the backlash was because he wore a Mariachi outfit but he is "proud to be a Mariachi singer."
"On the positive remarks, I just want to thank everybody for their support," he said in a news conference. "With the racism remarks, to be honest, it's just the people how they were raised. My father and mother told me that you should never judge people by how they look. You should judge them on the inside. And the saying that I go by is never judge a book by its cover."
He then took to his Twitter account and urged his 3,000 plus followers to ignore the negative comments.
According to the Houston Chronicle, De La Cruz, who appeared on NBC's "America's Got Talent," was asked at the last minute to perform the song after Darius Rucker from Hootie & The Blowfish could no longer make it.
He told his mom, Stacy De La Cruz, not to cry about the negative comments because he was determined not to let them bother him.
"I'd rather shed more happy tears than sad tears. But I will say this: As a mom, a parent, I'm going to be overprotective. I'm going to look over my shoulder, over their shoulder. We have four children. I'm going to be looking over all of them," she told the paper. "[But for those negative] words, it's always that saying, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt.'"
