Megyn Kelly didn't understand why blackface is wrong. So the internet told her

In the lead up to Halloween, Megyn Kelly had a segment on her 'Today' show on which she posed the following question: What’s wrong with blackface?

During the segment, titled ‘Halloween Costume Crackdown', the NBC show host conversed with fellow journalist Jenna Bush Hager, NBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff and Melissa Rivers about donning blackface for Halloween.

The entire panel was white.

"What is racist?" Kelly quipped.

When I was a kid, that [blackface] was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.

The rest of the panel attempted to softly explain why wearing blackface is, in fact, not OK.

Rivers said: "If you think it’s offensive, it probably is. Whatever happened to manners and polite society?"

But Kelly wasn’t budging.

On Halloween? You have guys running around with fake axes coming out of their heads! Like, it’s gonna be jarring!

And then, Kelly gave the example of Real Housewives of New York star Countess Luann de Lesseps, who was accused of racism after she darkened her skin for a Diana Ross Halloween costume.

She dressed as Diana Ross, and she made her skin look darker than it really is. And people said that that was racist! And I don’t know, I felt like, ‘Who doesn’t love Diana Ross?’ She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don’t know how, like, that got racist on Halloween.

Soboroff made his opinion clear. "I have not seen that, but it sounds a little racist to me."

People online reacted in a similar manner... i.e. BLACKFACE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Blackface is the act of a non-black person using makeup to paint their face in an effort to represent a black person.

It is seen as derogatory and offensive, and the practise has its roots in the 19^th century, where blackface was used by white performers in minstrel shows to caricature black people and perpetuate harmful stereotypes, like the ‘dandified coon’ and the ‘happy go lucky darky on the plantation'.

Others pointed out that the panel could have benefited from a black person joining them.

The entire segment was a hot mess.

Also, you can still have an awesome Halloween costume and not wear blackface.

Kelly has since apologised for her comments, saying:

I realise now that such behaviour is indeed wrong, and I am sorry. 

The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent; the wounds [are] too deep.

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