SNL guides Virginia state officials through all the ways blackface was 'never funny or cool'

Saturday Night Live on Virginia's blackface scandal

Saturday Night Live took on Virginia's mushrooming blackface scandal — now involving Gov. Ralph Northam (D), Attorney General Mark Herring (D), and state Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R) — with an exasperated Keenan Thompson as the state legislature's ethics committee chair making very, very clear wearing blackface "was never funny or cool."

Yes, even if it was part of a costume as a black person. Yes, even if the costume were of a woman. Yes, even if your costume won a contest. Yes, even if you were just goofing around with friends. Yes, even if it was the 1980s. Yes, also the 1990s.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.