Al Roker Under Fire for Dressing as Doc Brown From ‘Back to the Future’

“Today’ show weatherman Al Roker is under fire for dressing up on Halloween as Doc Brown, the quirky — and white — time machine inventor in the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy,” Page Six reports. “Some social media users asked why it was all right for him to dress up as a Caucasian character, while NBC canceled his colleague Megyn Kelly’s show after her controversial blackface comments.”

Political correctness is ruining everything, including Halloween.

Roker responded to the criticism in a tweet, “I’m going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON’T, won’t.”

“I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color if you’re white, you can be President Obama if you want. Just don’t color your skin!”

Roker makes a good point.

[totalpoll id=”136301″]

“Blackface” is in an offensive category all it’s own

While the criticism of Kelly might have been too harsh, there’s a significant difference between merely playing a person or character of a different race and “coloring your skin” as Roker put it.

“Blackface” has a long and shameful history in the United States in which whites portrayed African Americans in the most unflattering ways imaginable. You will be hard pressed to find an example in the early 20th century and before where minstrel shows and other types of entertainment where blackface was used in which black Americans weren’t denigrated.

However, this doesn’t mean children or adults of any race can’t portray people and characters of other races. That blackface once existed, shamefully, doesn’t mean every portrayal of other races is somehow equal to blackface.

This is the point Roker was basically making. Not everything is “racist.” People need to calm down.

There’s nothing wrong with Al Roker portraying the kooky Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

There is something wrong with everyone being so damned politically correct that they end up trying to ruin Halloween.