Al Roker, who channeled Back to the Future’s Dr. Emmet Brown for Halloween, clapped back at social media users who questioned why he dressed up as a white character amid the Megyn Kelly blackface scandal.
“I’m going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON’T, won’t,” the 64-year-old weatherman tweeted on Wednesday, October 31. “I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color if you’re white , you can be President Obama if you want. Just don’t color your skin!”
I’m going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON’T, won’t. I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color if you’re white , you can be President Obama if you want. Just don’t color your skin!
— Al Roker (@alroker) October 31, 2018
He added: “Happy Halloween!!”
Roker sported a white wig and lab coat for the ‘80s themed-Halloween episode of the Today show on Wednesday. Last week, Kelly, 47, came under fire for defending blackface during a discussion about Halloween costumes.
“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,” she said on the October 23 episode of Megyn Kelly Today. “Back when I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as like a character.”
After Kelly apologized in an email to coworkers, Roker spoke out about her remarks on the October 24 episode of the Today show.
“The fact is, while she apologized to the staff, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country,” he said. “This is a history going back to the 1830s — minstrel shows, to demean and denigrate a race wasn’t right. I’m old enough to have lived through ‘Amos ’n’ Andy,’ where you had white people in blackface playing two black characters and just magnifying the worst stereotypes about black people. And that’s what the big problem is.”
While Kelly also apologized on-air on Wednesday, the network decided to cancel her hour of the Today show amid the controversy.
