American journalist and NBC show host Megyn Kelly sparked a great deal of backlash after she and a group of panellists discussed wearing blackface during Halloween on her show, Megyn Kelly Today.
The topic arose after Kelly and her guests discussed the banning of Anne Frank, Cowboy and Nazi costumes at certain academic institutions. "What is racist?” Kelly asked. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person that puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was okay, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
Unsurprisingly, many were quick to address Kelly's views and inform her on the matter. Amber Ruffin, a writer on Late Night with Seth Meyers eloquently dissected Kelly's troubling remarks, providing insight into the consequences of blackface on Tuesday's episode. “It turns black people into a costume and divorces them from their humanity,” she explained. “We’re people, not costumes.”
Noting the historical significance of the act, and the limited scope provided by Kelly's all-white panel, Ruffin pointed out “the severely racist context in which blackface was introduced into this country” was ignored, and reminded viewers that “actions don’t exist separate to their context.”
Watch Ruffin do her thing below.