On Thursday’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah took a look at the unexpected news that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a long history of wearing blackface costumes, and identified some big problems with it — besides the racism of course.
On Wednesday, Trudeau apologized after Time Magazine published a photo from 2001 in which Trudeau wore brownface as part of an “Aladdin” costume. At the time, Trudeau also admitted to a separate instance of using Blackface. Since then, a video taken in the early 1990s emerged in which he put makeup on his face, neck, arms, hands and legs.
Noah started with a look at the photo from 2001. “There are so many problems with this photo. First of all, it’s obviously never ok to do blackface and secondly, if you are gonna darken your skin, at least get the color right,” Noah joked as the Trudeau photo appeared next to an image of Disney’s “Aladdin.” “Trudeau isn’t dressed as Aladdin. He’s dressed as Aladdin doing blackface. That’s not the color of Aladdin.”
“Trudeau didn’t even need the brownface to make the costume work. He did a full Aladdin outfit, at an ‘Arabian Nights’ themed-party,” Noah continued. “No one is going to see him and be like ‘huh, white skin. Are you the snowman from ‘Frozen’?”
Later on, Noah showed an image from the video. “Aside from the offensiveness of it, having black makeup on your entire body must have caused a lot of problems as well,” Noah said. “Think about it, the whole day you’re leaving makeup on doorknobs, are you getting it on food?”
There’s a lot more, including an amusing fake makeup commercial to talk white people out of doing blackface. Watch the whole thing above.