NBC host Megyn Kelly on Tuesday apologized in an email to her co-workers after facing backlash over comments that seemed to cast doubt on whether donning blackface for Halloween is racist.
Kelly was roundly criticized after saying on Tuesday morning that wearing blackface was considered “OK” when she was a child dressing up for the holiday.
{mosads}The broadcast journalist in a Tuesday afternoon email to her NBC colleagues wrote that she now believes her comments were “wrong” after hearing opposing points of view from “friends and colleagues.”
“I am sorry,” she wrote in the email provided by NBC. “The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent; the wounds too deep.”
“I’ve never been a ‘PC’ [politically correct] kind of person, but I understand that we do need to be more sensitive in this day and age,” wrote Kelly, a former Fox News anchor. “Particularly on race and ethnicity issues which, far from being healed, have been exacerbated in our politics over the past year.”
She wrote that she hopes to conduct herself going forward with more “understanding, love, sensitivity and honor.”
Kelly on her NBC show questioned whether it is racist for white people to wear blackface on Halloween.
“But what is racist?” Kelly said Tuesday morning. “You truly 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 OK, as long as you were dressing up as like a character,” Kelly continued.
She later said that she “can’t keep up with the number of people that we’re offending just by being normal people.”
Kelly has faced backlash over her views on race before. When she was still a Fox News host in 2013, she raised eyebrows after declaring that Santa Claus and Jesus were both white.