Ted Danson is apologizing again for one of the most controversial moments of his career. He said he will be apologizing “for the rest of my life” for a 1993 blackface roast of Whoopi Goldberg.
The incident, which took place while the pair were romantically involved, was recently explored on W. Kamau Bell’s podcast, Who’s With Me? The event occurred during a roast at the New York Friars Club. The Cheers actor performed racist jokes and insults. Jokes about the couple’s sex life, leading to criticism from those in attendance and from figures such as David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor.
“It was stupid and it was not my place, and it was wrong and it was hurtful … So I apologize again to anyone who’s listening, that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”
Danson says he had absolutely no business being there, and told Bell
His line of thinking was classic. He said he wanted to do “performance theater,” reasoning that if he were Black, he could say outrageous things. He concluded, “… do it in blackface and that will be funny or not, but it will be like, ‘I have license now.'”
Realizing he was wrong
For years, he said he was being driven by love. He now says he knows that line of thinking was wrong. “It doesn’t matter. Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters,” he said.
That kind of distinction is vital for going deeper into why blackface is so harmful. Blackface isn’t just about making your skin darker or wearing a costume. It evokes a distorted, painful history that goes back to the first minstrel shows in the mid-19th century. During these shows, white performers darkened their skin with polish and cork, wore ragged clothing, and exaggerated their features to mock and stereotype “Black” individuals. The very first minstrel shows took the form of itinerant troupes who practiced the affectations of enslaved Africans on Southern plantations.
White people in blackface portrayed characters who perpetuated many negative stereotypes of African Americans: that they were lazy, ignorant, hypersexual, criminal, cowardly. Historians trace the origins of the Jim Crow character to Thomas Rice, who debuted the role in 1830. The name was later applied to the white supremacist laws and practices designed to enforce segregation.
But the harm done is more complex
The harm is even more complex than just images. Blackface is an assertion of power and control. Professor David Leonard of Washington State University argues that it was an effort to allow society “to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human,” serving as a way to rationalize violence and Jim Crow segregation.
Yet, the “he didn’t know” excuse resurfaces in nearly every blackface incident. When offenders are caught, they frequently maintain that they did not intend harm and merely wanted to just have fun. While outside observers can never truly know an individual’s intent, what ultimately matters is the systemic impact and the immediate harm suffered by those targeted.
Danson also apologized to Goldberg for forcing her to relive the controversy, noting that she “has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully.” At the time, Goldberg had defended him publicly, saying she wrote much of the material herself.
Good intentions never have, and never will, make blackface acceptable. The history it carries is too heavy, and too real, to brush aside.
