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Megyn Kelly Slammed By High School Classmates For Claiming That Blackface Was Acceptable In Her Youth

By Tracey Johnson
Published on: 21:07 PST, Oct 28, 2018

High school students of Megyn Kelly’s alma mater have spoken out against the talk show host’s controversial comments that she made last week. The Students for Peace and Survival at Bethlehem Central High School wrote an opinion piece for NBC News where they called Kelly out on what life was like when she was a kid.

Kelly, 47, shocked the nation during her on-air discussion on her NBC show Megyn Kelly Today. Kelly, Jenna Bush Hager, Melissa Rivers, and Jacob Soboroff had a roundtable discussion and talked about controversial Halloween costumes on Tuesday, October 23. Kelly then said, “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween… Back when I was a kid, that was OK just as long as you were dressing as a character.”

According to New York Post, the Bethlehem Central High School students wanted Kelly to know that what she said was not okay in their current school, nor was it acceptable when she grew up in Bethlehem during the ’80s. The students pointed out that their local newspaper records confirm that minstrel shows were held at the elementary school gym as late as 1960, but that was a decade before Kelly was even born in 1970.

“We weren’t alive when Megyn was in high school but, in the recollection of many of our parents who grew up around here, it was not acceptable even in the 1980s town that she knew.”

It’s ironic that teenagers recognize that blackface was a poor attempt at camouflaging racial stereotypes through minstrelsy. The students also believe that blackface is a reflection of a systemic evil that lies far beneath the surface. Perpetuating racial stereotypes will only cause further divides.

By the end of the opinion piece, the students write that Kelly should use her journalism skills to make a difference and to help people be more tolerant and sensitive to these issues. They want Kelly to honor the promises she made in her tearful apology on her talk show the following day.

“Perhaps it’s naïveté, but in a society still bearing the scars of the times of blackface, a little bit of the innocence of hope might be necessary.”

Inquisitr reported that the Megyn Kelly Today show has since been canceled and that the network was working on an exit deal. Jenna Bush Hager and Jacob Soboroff have both expressed their regret at not having spoken out vehemently against Kelly’s comments during the show.

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