Megyn Kelly sparked social-media backlash Monday in a discussion on her “Megyn Kelly Today” about Halloween celebrants wearing black or white face makeup.
Kelly wondered aloud during a conversation about universities putting pressure on students not to wear costumes that might be deemed offensive. “What is racist?” she asked a panel that included Jenna Bush Hager, Jacob Soboroff, and Melissa Rivers. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was okay just as long as you were dressing as a character.”
Kelly suggested that some people who get in costume are simply trying to get into character, as in a case she cited the example of Luann de Lesseps, who once generated debate by going as Diana Ross for Halloween. “There was a controversy on ‘The Real Housewives of New York’ with Luann, as she dressed as Diana Ross and she made her skin look darker than it really is,” Kelly said. “People said that was racist! And I don’t know, like, I thought, like, ‘Who doesn’t love Diana Ross?’ She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don’t know how that got racist on Halloween.”
Kelly has waded into racial matters before and generated controversy by doing so. In 2013, while anchoring on Fox News Channel, she told viewers that “Santa is just white.”
On Twitter. some celebrities took her to task.
Because @megynkelly: minstrelsy is the basis for the coining of the term "Jim Crow" laws which served to humiliate & target Black Americans. Because caricaturing another race perpetuates the dehumanization of POC who are being killed & jailed at a disproportionate rate in the US
Dear @megynkelly — you and I are approximately the same age. Blackface was NOT okay when we were kids. Take it from a big-hearted boy who just wanted to show his love for Nipsey Russell on the worst Halloween of my life.
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