Twin sisters gave Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a grilling over his recent blackface scandals.
The young girls asked Trudeau “why did you paint your face brown?” in the latest episode of TV personality Jessi Cruickshank’s Facebook Watch show “New Mom, Who Dis?”
Trudeau replied to what appeared to be a question he expected:
Oh, um, it was something I shouldn’t have done because it hurt people. It’s not something that you should do, and that is something that I learned. I didn’t know it back then, but I know it now, and I’m sorry I hurt people.
“But did you paint your nose and your hands brown?” the girls responded.
Trudeau said:
U-hum, yeah. And it was the wrong thing to do, and I had a good conversation with my kids around taking responsibility for mistakes and making sure that we’re always sticking up for each other and not teasing each other, and being respectful towards each other.
“Sorry that I hurt you as well,” Trudeau added. “I’m sorry that I hurt kids who get to face teasing and discrimination because of the color of their skin. That’s just not right in this country, or anywhere around the world. We all have to work together to make sure it doesn’t happen, okay?”
The Liberal leader, currently running for reelection, was engulfed in controversy last month with the resurfacing of old video and photographs of him wearing offensive makeup on various occasions.
“It is something absolutely unacceptable to do,” he said, in one of the multiple apologies he issued. “It is something that people who live with the kind of discrimination that far too many people do — because of the color of their skin or their history, or their origins, or their language or their religion — face on a regular basis. And I didn’t see that from the layers of privilege that I have and for that I’m deeply sorry.”