Jenna Marbles Is Quitting YouTube After A Blackface Video Of Her As Nicki Minaj Resurfaced
Videos of Jenna Marbles in blackface and using language offensive to Asians resurfaced earlier this week.
Following the backlash, Jenna announced she'll be leaving Youtube, possibly for good.
It's the end of an era: After 10 years of making YouTube videos, Jenna Marbles has announced that she's going to be quitting the platform. But sadly, this isn't a decision that Jenna made out of nowhere—earlier this week, Jenna received a lot of backlash after older videos of her doing racially insensitive things for video content, such as wearing blackface to appear as Nicki Minaj and using language offensive to Asians, resurfaced online.
Following the blowback, Jenna made an 11-minute apologizing for her past actions and announced her hiatus from YouTube. “I’ve spent the last few days privating almost all of my old content, and I’m sorry if any of that holds any nostalgia for you, but I’m literally not trying to put out negative things into the world,” she said.
Jenna then played clips from both of the videos, which were filmed in 2011. She called her Nicki Minaj blackface video “cringey and embarrassing.” While she explained that it was not her intention to hurt anyone by doing blackface, she acknowledged that it doesn't excuse what she did. “This isn’t okay, and it hasn’t existed on the internet, because it isn’t okay,” she said, after explaining she took the video down a long time ago. “I haven’t done anything remotely like that [since then], because I heard people say ‘this is blackface’ and ‘I don’t like that.”’
And in regards to the video of her using the words “ching chong wing wong” in a rap song, Jenna apologized for that too and said that she's extremely embarrassed by it. “I shouldn’t have said that. Ever. It’s not cool. It’s not cute. It’s not okay.” In addition to these two apologies, Jenna also addressed that many of her videos perpetuated gender-binary stereotypes. “I don’t think making jokes about your gender is funny,” she added. “I know there’s a lot of people that struggle with their identity or have varying, fluid identities.”
Wrapping up the video, Jenna said that she's going to step away from her channel for an undetermined amount of time that could possibly turn into forever. “Just know that I am doing my best,” she concluded. “As a someone, clearly, with their own past they are not proud of, I just try to see people for who they are right now, today. I think I’m just gonna move on from this channel for now…I want to make sure the things I put out into the world are not hurting anyone.”
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