CNN anchor Don Lemon went after NBC’s Megyn Kelly on Tuesday night over remarks she made about wearing blackface on Halloween.
Kelly received a ton of criticism for asking “what is racist,” noting that white people “get in trouble” for wearing blackface on Halloween, as do black people for wearing whiteface. In her analysis, which was originally intended to be about what is and isn’t allowed to be worn for Halloween in modern times, she told the panel that it was “okay” when she was a kid “as long as you were dressing up like a character.” She later apologized.
Lemon provided his own analysis, explaining how Kelly’s apparent privilege and the generation she’s from may be the reasons for her comments.
“She said that it’s ‘okay,’ it was ‘okay’ when she was growing up. She’s 47 years old. She’s my age. It was never- blackface was never okay,” Lemon said. “Maybe people did it, but just because someone did it, that doesn’t mean you’re okay … Maybe people lived in a bubble. Maybe people didn’t understand their privilege. Maybe people didn’t know what was racist and they thought it was okay in their own community, in their own bubble to do it. But it was never- it has never been okay to do that.”