I was saddened to learn about the firing of Megyn Kelly from her morning NBC-TV show.
The network wasted a golden opportunity to have a rational and enlightening conversation about racism and white privilege. Had I been the CEO of NBC, I would have insisted Ms. Kelly and a panel of experts discuss intelligently why her comments about blackface were wrong-headed and part of continuing our dangerous disease of racism.
For those who missed it, Ms. Kelly on television expressed her opinion that everybody should have the right to put on blackface to be a Halloween character, or for black people to put on whiteface for the same reason. She faced a firestorm of politically correct outrage and tried to take back her comments the next day. But it was too late, the damage had been done.
So now Ms. Kelly just might go back to Fox News and make comments that she was the victim of our growing national disease of political correctness. There is some truth in that assertion, but the PC debate only distracts us from the more substantive discussion.
Ms. Kelly has impressed me as a privileged white girl who doesn’t understand the struggles of the poor, outsiders or people of color. She was insensitive about the feelings of such people when making her comments, but mostly out of privilege rather than bedrock racism.
I’ve already discussed in this space earlier about how I took part in the Wayland High School Variety Show in March 1966, wearing blackface as part of a “Showboat” style of presentation. The programs were well received in the community, which certainly doesn’t absolve them of our views today they were racist.
Furthermore, the last time I trick-or-treated, more than 55 years ago, I wore blackface. I am embrassed. I am ashamed.
But the first non-cartoon film (Disney’s “Steamboat Willie” was the first) to include sound was “The Jazz Singer,” a historic movie in which actor-singer Al Jolson sang in blackface. The popular 1930s duo of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll starred in “Amos ‘n Andy,” a terrifically popular radio program about blacks, even though they were white.
The first blockbuster movie, “The Birth of a Nation,” by D.W. Griffith, portrayed black people as thugs and rapists and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. It was so popular and influential that President Woodrow Wilson was given a private screening in the White House.
The point here is that the United States of America so often has been promoted as a special bastion of freedom and individual rights, yet these wonderful benefits did not really apply to black people, and for that matter, women and Native Americans. It was through political and social movements that the U.S. Constitution evolved with amendments to right past wrongs.
We must acknowledge that when the Constitution was ratified in 1791, the first 10 amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights, applied only to free, while males at least 21 years of age and property owners. There was a lot of work that still had to be done.
Appreciating the struggles of bygone days and acknowledging our past sins and continuing disease are two very necessary functions of creating a more perfect union, a more just society. I think Megyn Kelly just didn’t get it.
So the best course of action was to develop an intelligent and education dialogue instead of once again sweeping the problem under the rug, which is what we seem to have done for a long time. And judging by some of the latest news developments, we are still paying for it.
