On Friday, YouTuber Shane Dawson posted a 20-minute video, where he apologized for a number of things he's done in the past.
"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 untagging my Instagram, literally doing whatever I can to pretend those things didn't happen," he said.
"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."
“I’m going to start with all the racism I put onto the internet as an adult, not a child. I was at least 20 when I started YouTube, and I made the decision to play stereotypes of Black people, or Asian people, or Mexicans, or pretty much every race," he said.
Let's get right into it. I'll break his quotes down by topic for you.
"Blackface was something that I did a lot. There's no excuse for it. I didn't do the work. I didn't look into the history of it and why it's so wrong, and why people were so upset. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be Black, and see this white fucking guy do blackface, and the whole internet at that time being like, ‘LOL!' That's insane, and I am so sorry. I should lose everything for that."
"Me, as a white person, wearing a wig, playing a character, doing stereotypes and then saying the n-word is something that I should have probably lost my career for at the time. There's no amount of apologizing that can take it away."
On joking about murdering someone, which people believed was about Franchesca Leigh Ramsey, who attempted to call out Shane:
"In the segment I started talking about figuratively murdering someone — a lot of people believe I was talking about Franchesca Leigh [Ramsey]. I can say, without a doubt, that was not about Franchesca Leigh. Talking about anyone like that is crazy — especially a woman."
"They made it seem like I was talking about it like it was normal. I shouldn't have been joking about it anyways. That's something I have addressed before. My childhood — I've had a lot of pain, I've had a lot of issues with my family. I took that pain, and I turned it into jokes. Instead of joking about them, I should've gone to therapy. I would never talk about a child in any way that was inappropriate. That is disgusting. That is gross. That is something I did for shock value. I promise that is not me."
After apologizing, Shane went on to talk about how he's since made changes. He says he no longer makes inappropriate jokes or uses racial slurs. "All those apologies, if you accept them, thank you. If you don't, I 100% understand."
