Another week, another lame apology for racial insensitivity–actually, two of them, both from the same person. Yep, here we go again… and again.
Facing backlash over her October 23 in-defense-of-blackface comments on her eponymous NBC daytime talk show, Megyn Kelly took the “I’m sorry” route twice–in an email to network staff and on camera. But like so many people feigning contrition over racial faux pas these days, she couldn’t resist qualifying her so-called apologies, revealing that not only is she probably not truly sorry, but she actually hasn’t learned much.
“I have never been a PC kind of person,” the Megyn Kelly Today host said on air Wednesday, diminishing the entire issue by suggesting that calling out the racism of blackface is more about being PC than about expressing human empathy and understanding of our national history.
"I want to begin with two words, I'm sorry..The country feels so divided and I have no wish to add to that pain and offense. I believe this is a time for more understanding, more love, more sensitivity and honor..Thank you for listening and for helping me listen too." Megyn Kelly pic.twitter.com/6hHrvZLNvK
— Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) October 24, 2018
The backlash set in motion her swift dismissal from her $69 million NBC gig. And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving lady, one who once insisted that Santa must be white and that the whiteness of Jesus is a “verifiable fact.” Like Roseanne Barr and viral Lyft passenger Robert Ortiz before her, she’s earned her unemployment.
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Several TV personalities of color, including Al Roker, Padma Lakshmi, and Don Lemon, have schooled Kelly on why blackface isn’t OK and never has been. Unfortunately, their comments went over the heads of people determined to be stubborn and ignorant when it comes to race.
Related: Don Lemon isn’t buying Megyn Kelly’s feigned ignorance over the racist roots of blackface
They’ll continue to groan about the PC police, but “PC” is irrelevant here. This isn’t about whether we call black people “African-Americans” or simply “black.” It’s not about right vs. left, either. It’s about centuries of denigration and an evolving minority that will no longer accept that white lives–and white feelings–matter more.
Apologetic Kelly further underscored her continued ignorance by echoing the idea that if blackface is wrong, then so is whiteface. Wrong again. Sorry not sorry to burst the bubble in which she and much of white America live, but equating whiteface with blackface, like so much tit-for-tat Trumpian logic, is an exercise in cluelessness.
If it weren’t for the loaded history behind blackface, history that white people made, we wouldn’t be having this debate. Whiteface has never been a weapon of mass demoralization like blackface. Shouldn’t a highly paid and supposedly educated journalist know history?
As for Kelly’s defense of white women sporting dress-up Afros, a sartorial choice that becomes a point of debate around this time every year, I actually have no problem with the wigs in theory. Blacks popularized traditional Afros in the late ’60s and ’70s as an expression of black pride. There’s no racist context unless a white person wearing one puts it there, which The Real Housewives of New York City’s Luann de Lesseps did last Halloween.
Topping off her Diana Ross costume with an Afro wig and accentuating it with subtle blackface were passively racist moves. Any true Diana Ross fan knows her trademark hair is long and flowing, nothing like the bird’s nest on the head of the reality star, who was basically stereotyping black beauty in the ’70s (black woman = Afro, which is terrible math), not paying homage to a specific black woman. It may not have been intentionally racist, but the racist underpinnings were unmistakable.
On the other hand, when Vogue recently caught flak for its photo shoot featuring an Afro-wigged Kendall Jenner, I shrugged. In that fashion context, it’s just a hairstyle, not “cultural appropriation” (unless we’re going to start attaching that term to black people with straightened hair–a tonsorial practice rooted in racism and the low estimation of natural black beauty).
Let’s not forget how popular white Afro perms were in the ’70s, favored by the likes of Barbra Streisand and Leo Sayer, who received zero criticism for theirs.
Blackface is a thoroughly different beast. It originated in the days of slavery when whites used it to diminish blacks and has never been acceptable to us. A white person who cares about the black history that’s the crux of American history, understands why it’s offensive. It’s not so much the blackface as what it represents.
But of course, to whites who moan when we call out racism, what offends us doesn’t matter because we’re B-list citizens. Their only concern is that having to put more thought into what they say and do and the Halloween costumes they wear inconveniences them.
I’ve seen comments that used criticism of Kelly’s views on blackface as an excuse to launch new attacks on “Libtards,” which just shows the racism of the people commenting. They discount centuries of white-on-black oppression and the effect it continues to have on our national psyche while exploiting our objection by spinning it as leftie hysteria in order to further the divisive agenda of a Presidential administration that refuses to denounce white supremacy.
In the comment section of the first story I read about the Megyn Kelly controversy, a white man asked how he could pull off a Martin Luther King Jr. costume without blackface. Unpainted, he argued, he would be just a white guy wearing a suit. Probably. But with blackface, he wouldn’t be any more of a ringer for MLK Jr.? If I put on the same suit, I’d be just a black guy in a suit, not an MLK Jr. lookalike. Why does blackness to some white people seem to hinge squarely on blackness?
Perhaps without meaning to, this white man was basically saying that blacks are interchangeable. Rather than looking more closely to find specific identifying qualities, he made MLK Jr. all about his blackness. If white people are going to go dark without tanning, they need to be prepared for criticism. Those of us who can’t scrub off our black live with much worse.
Kelly and her ilk need to stop blaming us if they’re walking on eggshells. That’s the legacy that the nation’s white founders passed on to all Americans. It’s too late now to just sweep it away.
Related: Memers rejoice over news of Megyn “Blackface” Kelly’s firing from NBC News
JohnDonson
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Bob LaBlah
Celeste, how is it you can hop on those of us who click on and comment on articles that help with your advertising rates quicker than a fly on fresh cow manure but people like Andrew with obvious b-s sites about dating and financial (or swindles) are given a free pass? I dutifully ask where are you when your needed?
Rugby8
but….str8 guy Eric McCormick playing a big ol’ gay boy on Will and Grace isn’t offensive???
That’s ok?
Rugby8
This is a Gay blog….right?
Juanjo
Do you actually have a brain inside your head? Just asking since by your comments, you do not.
jakejacob
You do know Eric is a liberal, right? Liberals can do no wrong.
Kangol
For $69 million and a multiyear contract, she should have tried a little harder not to be a racist moron. Maybe FauxNews or Sinclair or some other right-wing outfit will help her fail upwards again. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Creamsicle
She could go into the vitaceuticals like Alex Jones, but give it a Goopy twist.
sanfranca1
Excellent article.
Antony
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jrh311
I’ll never understand how people can’t see the difference between “black face,” where one is stereotyping black people to exploit them, and people coloring their skin on Halloween because the individual they’re dressing up as has darker skin. It’s the intent that matters in my opinion. If they were just dressing up as “a black person,” that would be one thing. But if dressing up to be a particular celebrity because they’re a fan, I think it can be forgiven.
topsyturvy
Are you black? If not then you might need to sit down.
PinkoOfTheGange
Why just the apology and not the offense video? Could it be that this time there has been an overreaction and some are hoping every progressive just jumps on the band wagon without actually hearing what she said?
She said black face was okay in context when she was a child.
No one said it wasn’t 40 years ago (Even 8 years ago it was tolerated).
She went on to question the reaction to the Housewife’s costume’s blow back.
That is someone in need of an education not firing, unless their rating suck.
This glee over her firing is disgusting. She is an entitled fool, but this wasn’t a win. The win would of been an on air schooling and her being actually contrite afterwords. The win went to the execs not having to pay the contract’s next term.
Kangol
This isn’t the first time Megyn Kelly has expressed awful views on race, with attendant criticism, so it’s not like she wasn’t aware that she ought to be a bit more thoughtful and sensitive. Second, not a single other person–all white–in that roundtable with her stepped in to “educate” her, except at the end, when Soboroff said her suggestion was kind of racist, though he knew he should have called her out more forcefully. Blackface was not acceptable “8 years ago,” i.e. 2010, most certainly not by most decent people of any race. Barack Obama was elected in 2008, so anyone running around in blackface would surely have known it was especially offensive in light of the new leader of the country. It ceased to be acceptable on TV and in films more 40 years ago; did you complete forget the US Civil Rights Movement and the cultural shifts of the late 1960s and 1970s? This mediocre, barely-talented white woman was being paid a king’s ransom, which she did not deserve, to host a show with middling to poor ratings. She shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, but that’s on Andy Lack, who needs to start answering questions, as much as it is on Megyn Kelly.
PinkoOfTheGange
The word I used was “tolerated”: Robert Downy JR. dose blackface in Tropic Thunder 2008. And the controversy the movie had was over the depiction of another character.
Billy Crystal 2012 Oscars.
Even Spike Lee used it in 2000 in his homage to Mel Brookes The Producers.
1986 Soul Man
The full push back of black face is fairly new.
A white person doing it would not of been effective, nor was that my suggestion. I was thinking more the Bill Maher, prof Michael Eric Dyson talk in June 2017.
Coruna2018
PinkoftheGarage,,
8 years ago, blackface was never tolerated. It hasn’t been since, at least, the late 1940’s. Where do you live that it was tolerated 8 years ago. It must’ve been quite a racist and overwhelmingly white area of the U. S.
Scout
I saw her segment on blackface. Her remarks were within the context of what’s appropriate for Halloween and whether blackface fits in as appropriate. It was NOT bigoted or racist! NBC was just lying in the reeds waiting for an opportunity to fire her, and they decided to use her remarks because they could foment and stoke them up as “unacceptably racist” so they could get rid of her. Plain and simple. They did not like her politics nor her views on sexual abuse because NBC has had big problems in that area. She had become an embarrassment to them and needed to be fired.
PinkoOfTheGange
NBC really doesn’t care about her politics unless it affects her ratings.
Umoja
How can we know how America’s history with slavery and race ridicule results in rules that apply to other countries?
StupidBoy
Racist blond, white women from Fox news say what?
I grew up in a small Iowa town in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and I don’t remember ANYONE every dressing in “blackface” like a Minstrel. I’m 3 years younger than she is, but if my little Iowa town didn’t do it, I have a problem believing kids in Champaign, Illinois did it.
She really has kids named Thatcher Bray, Yardley Evans, and Edward Yates?
Ok, I’m too old to put up with her white, apologist, bullshit.
Good for her in getting fired.
She has reportedly been a major white racist for years.
DHT
Something that inevitably comes up in defense of blackface is Bojangles of Harlem. Clearly Fred Astair was inspired by Bill Robinson and black tap dancers. His tribute would have been both elegant and profound if it wasn’t for the blackface he wore. Now it is just troubling to watch, the tribute suffers, and the performance is consequently reduced to parody. The dancing is still worth watching, but try to imagine it without the blackface and realize how much more beautiful it would have been. With this unfortunate costume choice we have all lost something.
Shaner
If she does as the headline says then whatdoes Don Lemon deserve for his recent comments? Double standard much?