Excuse me, Megyn Kelly, but are you stuck on naive?

On her October 23 show, she asked, “What is racist about blackface on Halloween?”

When you're trending on social because you allowed nonsense to escape your mouth. When you can’t gasp her ignorance, and quickly remember she used to work for Fox News, so her falsehood of facts makes sense. But then, you quickly realize her falsehood of reality is the problem in our society.

Kelly then had the audacity to say it was acceptable to wear blackface when she was a child. Nope, it was never acceptable, but maybe you missed the memo when you were sending out your fake apology.

Just in case you haven’t read her fake words on paper, here is the internal memo she sent to her colleagues at NBC:

Dear friends & teammates –

One of the wonderful things about my job is that I get the chance to express and hear a lot of opinions. Today is one of those days where listening carefully to other points of view, including from friends and colleagues, is leading me to rethink my own views.

When we had the roundtable discussion earlier today about the controversy of making your face look like a different race as part of a Halloween costume, I suggested that this seemed O.K. if done as part of this holiday where people have the chance to make themselves look like others. The iconic Diana Ross came up as an example. To me, I thought, why would it be controversial for someone dressing up as Diana Ross to make herself look like this amazing woman as a way of honoring and respecting her?

I realize now that such behavior is indeed wrong, and I am sorry. The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent; the wounds too deep.

I’ve never been a “P.C.” kind of person — but I understand that we do need to be more sensitive in this day and age. Particularly on race and ethnicity issues which, far from being healed, have been exacerbated in our politics over the past year. This is a time for more understanding, love, sensitivity, and honor, and I want to be part of that. I look forward to continuing that discussion.

I’m honored to work with all of you every day.

Love,

Mk

It’s ridiculous how many times in 2018 we’ve had to state why blackface offends the black community. Blackface was never used to honor our culture. Instead, it was used to create stereotypical roles that depicted us in a negative light. Please give me one example that blackface was used to be positive. I'll wait for you to pull some bulls**t out your ass in an attempt to excuse your ignorance.

Are we forgetting the origin of minstrel shows in the 19th century? It was a way for white people to display black as stupid and inferior. It was not used to encourage positive dialogue, so why are we pretending that it’s not wrong now? We just dealt with this last month when two Australian Tasmanian Penguins Football Club players dressed up as Serena and Venus Williams, complete with blackface. Yeah, they tried it, and believed it was not a problem until they faced a social media dragging.

As usual, once it becomes an issue, their PR apology immediately follows, stating the usual line, "We would never do it again because it's racist and hurtful." Really? Was it the negative backlash that made you realize the problem?

Ms. Kelly, do you really understand the problem, because I doubt you do. You don't have enough empathy to recall on your segment that you said, "I don’t see anything wrong." And why would you? You will never understand being a black person in America, because you don’t want to.

We live in the digital age where we can find out information with a click of our smartphones. Yet, some people don’t want to educate themselves on racism, discrimination or stereotypes.

Halloween is next week, and if you have to ask if it’s offensive, the answer is “yes.” It’s always been "yes."

Are we going to see blackface this Halloween? Yes, because deep down, they don’t give a f**k. Megyn Kelly is not the first person to obviously have no issue with it, and she won’t be the last. She's just the latest privileged white woman with a platform to be ignorant.

Kricel Francis

Writing since September 2018 · 3 stories contributed