Russian television station, NTV, aired an incredibly racist segment attempting to mock former President Barack Obama this week. The segment appeared in a satirical show called Mezhdunarodnaya Pilorama, which translates to International Sawmill. During a recent episode, host Tigran Keosayan teased an interview with the former President regarding his new book, A Promised Land.
"We now go live to the dark side of America's history, Barack Obama," Keosayan said.
Instead of tossing the show to the former U.S. Senator, a white woman in Blackface appeared on the screen wearing a red bandana, gold chains, black gloves and a black shirt. The woman then proceeded to wave her hands and rock back and forth as she exemplified racist tropes often attributed to rappers. She also shouted, "Black Lives Matter," repeatedly before answering questions in an awkward accent.
"Are you proud of your book?" the host asked.
"Of course," she answered.
"Because none of your relatives have written books?" he followed up.
"Because none of my relatives that came before me could write," she replied.
NTV has not provided a comment regarding the mind-numbingly ignorant sketch. Instead, Keosayan's colleague, Margarita Simonyan, went on record to defend the skit.
“As someone who is part of an ethnic minority in Russia, Tigran regularly makes fun, on the air, of his large 'ethnic' nose and his belonging to a 'Black' community (look it up if you don't know which ethnicities are referred to as 'Black' in Russia)," she claimed.
In contrast, many have also come out to condemn the skit. Critic Alexei Navalny sarcastically called the skit "another masterpiece" and pointed out that Keosayan sent his daughter to study in the same city where Obama went to college during his presidency. Other Twitter users have called the sketch both "insulting" and a piece of "garbage."
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