Is “The View” Co-Host Joy Behar A Racist for Wearing Halloween Costume with Darkened Face Makeup and Afro-Like Hair?

NEW YORK, NY – Political pundit and Fox News host Laura Ingraham defended The View co-host Joy Behar, encouraging media and the public to treat Behar fairly over images that surfaced appearing to show her with a darkened face and afro-like hair.

Conservatives claiming that @JoyVBehar is racist bc of an old costume are falling into the PC Puritans’ trap. Even if she’s often unfair to conservatives—stick to basic principles of fairness.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) February 7, 2019

A 2016 clip of The View began circulating Thursday after photos of two prominent Virginia democrats wearing blackface surfaced.

Behar says she was 29 in the photo and dressed as a “beautiful African woman” to attend a halloween party.

Joy Behar admitted during a taping of The View in 2016 to dressing as a “beautiful African women” at a Halloween party when she was 29 which involved makeup “that was a little bit darker than my skin”

The show even ran an image of the old photo pic.twitter.com/qKQqzDPxyn

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 6, 2019

Surprised at Behar’s appearance in the photo, former co-host Raven-Symoné jokingly asked her, “Are you my auntie?”

Behar said she’d applied some “makeup that was a little bit darker than my skin.”

Ingraham and Behar sit on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but Ingraham tweeted her support Thursday despite their political differences.

Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to darkening his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume after pictures from his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced showing two individuals, one dressed in black face and the other in a KKK costume. Northam says he is not either of the people in the photo.

Virginia Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted Wednesday to dressing in blackface in college. “In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurt’s Blood, and perform a song. It sounds ridiculous even now writing it,” he said in a statement.

Fifty-eight percent ofAmericans think white people dressing up in blackface is not acceptable and 26 percent aren’t sure what they think, according to a YouGov poll. Sixteen percent say the practice is acceptable.

Over 80 percent of Democrats said whites dressing in blackface is unacceptable, according to the poll. Only 44 percent of Republicans concurred.

Americans had significantly less problems with black face in 2015, when 47 percent of Americans said it was acceptable for whites to dress in blackface costumes, according to a YouGov poll.

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