‘Family Matters’ Star Darius McCrary Arrested In Michigan — Claims To Be On Par With Martin Luther King Jr.

On Wednesday, actor Darius McCrary was arrested in Michigan after allegedly failing to pay court-ordered child support. Upon his release, McCrary tweeted out a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested with the caption “If they did it to Dr. King…Who am I?”

McCrary is best known for his time on the 1990’s sitcom Family Matters. Family Matters first aired on ABC from 1989 to 1997 then on CBS from 1997 to 1998. The American sitcom was perhaps best known for the character Steve Urkel — a loveable nerd with an insatiable love for the eldest Winslow daughter Laura.

While McCrary did not play Family Matters‘ most endearing character, McCrary’s character Eddie Winslow had his fair share of air time. The sitcom’s regular focus on Eddie Winslow included an episode where Eddie finds himself arrested for what turned out to be an instance of racial profiling by the fictional arresting officers.

McCrary now feels that his real life legal turmoil revolves around a similar racial motivation. As previously mentioned, McCrary was arrested and jailed for a short period of time Wednesday, March 25 for failure to pay $5,500 in back child support, according to WENN.

While arrests for failure to pay child support is unfortunately a rather common occurrence, McCrary seemingly feels that he is more a victim of a biased “system” than a delinquent father.

As indicated in the above copied tweet from McCrary’s Twitter profile, McCrary makes the argument that arresting him for failure to pay child support is really nothing more than an attempt to unfairly penalize him for being African American. McCrary elaborated on his tweet in a reply to a comment in which he stated,

“It’s not only made 2 Destroy US (BlackMen) it’s made 2 keep families separated.”

In an effort to further highlight what he feels to be a racially biased system, McCrary invoked the legal history of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King is renowned as the most famous civil rights activists in U.S. history. Dr. King made a career of speaking out against the injustices of institutional racism in America and was himself arrested at one point in Birmingham, Alabama following a nonviolent protest.

Some onlookers may be quick to point out, however, that comparing his arrest for failure to pay child support to the the infamous arrest of Dr. King is perhaps a tad bit extreme on McCrary’s part. Despite such potential criticism, McCrary seems confident in his assertion that his arrest is equatable to that of Dr. King’s in that they both stem from institutional racism.

[Featured Image credit to Assignment X, Body Image credit to Wikia]