Fans of the “Golden Girls” were outraged after Hulu removed a popular episode of the beloved sitcom due to an alleged reference to blackface in the episode.
Amid the Black Lives Matter protests taking place around the world, numerous U.S. TV shows, including The Office, Scrubs, and 30 Rock have removed episodes or were taken off replay services because of references to blackface – a term used to describe a non-Black person wearing darkened theatrical make-up to present a caricature of a Black person.
Hulu pulled the Golden Girls episode “Mixed Blessings” from season 3. In the episode, Bea Arthur’s character Dorothy meets the family of her son’s fiancee, an older black woman (played by Rosalind Cash).
Rue McClanahan’s character Blanche and Betty White’s Rose both enter the room wearing mud masks on their faces.
As the audience laughs, Betty White says, “This is mud on our faces. We’re not really black.”
The decision to remove the episode didn’t sit well with fans of the show, who took to social media to slam Hulu for cheapening the Black Lives Matter movement.
“First of all, they were in mud masks not blackface,” one person tweeted. “And second of all, in what world does ‘Stop killing us.’ sound like ‘Please remove episodes of Golden Girls’? I didn’t see that [asked] on anyone’s protest sign…”
Another user tweeted: “Yeah, these companies and media platforms are trivializing the situation by sending the message that our demand for justice is as petty as removing episodes of the Golden Girls off a streaming platform. This is a calculated effort to cheapen our message.”
