CNN’s Don Lemon: No, Nick Cannon’s Whiteface Is Not Racist

Mariah Carey accessory Nick Cannon debuted a new character on Instagram Monday: Connor Smallnut. To play him, Cannon donned whiteface.

As CNN anchor Don Lemon put it during his weekly commentary segment on the Tom Joyner Show, “Cue the backlash and faux outrage.”

“Yes, it is a double standard, and rightly so,” Lemon said. “Why? Very simply — because of slavery, because of Jim Crow, because of segregation. Because blackface was created to mock a group of people who had no power, and to further stereotype them as animals, as monkeys, and as less than human. Blackface was used as a way for white people to get jobs by performing as offensive representations of black people. Real black people never got the jobs. They just hired white people to do it in blackface.”

“What Nick Cannon did may be obnoxious or silly or immature or gimmicky,” Lemon continued. “However, it is not racist. Not one white person I asked said they were offended by it. Not one white person will be mocked for it, or will lose out on a job, because Nick Cannon is playing a white person in his Instagram video.”

“If you don’t understand that,” Lemon concluded, channeling none other than Howard Stern, “you’re a moron.”

Listen to the audio below, via the Tom Joyner Show (that rhymed!):

[Image via screengrab]

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