“I’m going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON’T, won’t,” tweeted Roker, 64.
“I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color,” he tweeted. “if you’re white, you can be President Obama if you want. Just don’t color your skin!”
Today/Twitter
Last week, while discussing attempts at universities to discourage “inappropriate and offensive costumes,” former Fox News host Kelly asked: “But what is racist? Because truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character.”
Rokercondemned Kelly’s commentaryand spoke about the incident withSavannah Guthrieand Craig Melvin live on the air last week.
“The fact is, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the county,” he said. “This is a history, going back to the 1830s [with] minstrel shows. To demean and denigrate a race wasn’t right. I’m old enough to have lived throughAmos ‘n’ Andywhere you had white people in blackface playing two black characters just magnifying the stereotypes about black people. And that’s what the big problem is. … No good comes from it. It’s just not right.”
“She said something stupid, she said something indefensible,” added Melvin, who called Kelly’s statement “ignorant and racist” but also called her “a colleague” and “a friend.”
Erik Pendzich/REX/Shutterstock
On Wednesday,Kelly’s attorney blasted NBC Newsas both parties attempt to negotiate her exit from the network.
In response, an NBC spokesperson told PEOPLE: “Unlike Mr. Freedman, who has repeatedly commented to the media throughout the negotiations, we respect the confidentiality of the process, and will have no comment until it reaches its conclusion.”
source: people.com
