Jaden and Jada Pinkett Smith Call Out Shane Dawson
Written by SOURCE on June 27, 2020
Hours after Shane Dawson posted an apology video for past racist behavior, a clip surfaced that showed Dawson appearing to touch himself in a sexual manner while looking at a poster of an 11-year-old Willow Smith.
Both Jada Pinkett Smith and Jaden Smith called him out on Twitter.
On Friday night, the famed YouTuber posted a 20-minute video in which he apologized for his past offensive actions, such as donning blackface, using the n-word, and joking about pedophilia.
“I have done a lot of things in my past that I hate, that I wish I could make go away, that I tried to make go away by deleting videos, or un-tagging my Instagram, literally doing whatever I can to pretend those things didn’t happen,” he said in the video, titled “Taking Accountability.” “Because yes, I apologized for a lot of them but I’m 31, almost 32. Those apologies suck. I don’t know who that person is anymore … This video is coming from a place of just wanting to own up to my shit.”
Dawson, who has more than 4.3 million YouTube subscribers, specifically addressed old sketch videos of him portraying Black, Asian, and Mexican people in stereotypical ways. He went on to apologize for using blackface as well as the n-word on his channel, and admitted those actions should’ve ended his career.
“The biggest problem with me doing that and posting it on the internet was it made young people at the time who were watching me think it was OK,” Dawson said. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘Yeah, I used to watch your videos as a kid and I never saw anything wrong with that,’ and that is scary because it made me realize, oh my god, I’ve been a part of such a huge problem, and I have just been avoiding it, and that’s wrong.”
He continued: “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I added to the normalization of blackface or the normalization of saying the n-word … It’s not a funny word, especially for a white person to say. Me, as a white person, wearing a wig and playing a character and doing stereotypes and then saying the n-word is something that I should have probably lost my career for at the time, and there’s no amount of apologizing that can take it away … I was just another white guy who can get away with anything.”
Dawson then touched on his childhood experience, suggesting he dealt with pain by making inappropriate jokes—like his comments on pedophilia during a 2014 podcast.
“I swear on my life I am not somebody who would ever talk about a child that in any way was inappropriate,” he said. “That is disgusting, that is gross, it is not something I would ever do. It is something I did for shock value or because I thought it was funny. It’s all gross and I promise that that is not real; that is not me.”
Though he has apologized for his offensive behavior in the past, Dawson said he is now willing to face full repercussions.
“I’m willing to lose everything,” Dawson said toward the end of the video. “At this point, realizing how many people I’ve hurt or how many people I’ve inspired to say awful things or do anything awful, to finally just own up to all of this and be accountable is worth losing everything to me.”
Affter Dawson posted the apology, a clip surfaced that showed Dawson appearing to touch himself in a sexual money while looking at a poster
You can watch Dawson’s full statement below.
His video came just a day after fellow YouTuber Jenna Marbles announced she was leaving the platform in wake of renewed backlash over videos from 2011 and 2012. One of the controversial posts showed Marbles impersonating Nicki Minaj while wearing blackface.
“It was not my intention to do blackface,” she said. “I do want to tell you how unbelievably sorry I am if I ever offended you by posting this video or by doing this impression, and that that was never my intention. It’s not okay. It’s shameful. It’s awful. I wish it wasn’t part of my past.”
