Thanks to Sean “Diddy” Combs’ allegedly villainous ways and federal indictment, he’s become quite the hot topic over the last month—but a few people have already taken things too far just in time for Halloween.
In a since-deleted TikTok video that went viral video on social media, a white college student and his woman friend were shown dressed up as the Bad Boy mogul and a bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby oil—a clear reference to Diddy’s “freak-offs” and the alleged 1,000 bottles of baby oil that the feds apparently found during a home raid earlier this year. While the imagery itself is uncomfortable, what made the video that much more disturbing was that the man donned blackface to really “drive the point home.”
Naturally, once people got wind of the video, folks online were swift in their reactions:
“Ahh yes, notorious red bow-tie wearer P Diddy. Looks like he recycled his Tucker Carlson costume from last year and smeared Hershey’s chocolate sauce on his face,” wrote one user on X/Twitter.
“The fact that it’s not even what diddy normally wears too, literally just an excuse to bring back the minstrel show look,” wrote another.
“I ain’t never seen Combs in nothing like this outfit with these dirty ass tore up sneakers. That said, they’re clearly trolling. Whatever, this shit ain’t clever,” another said.
We don’t know who needs to hear this—and we can’t believe we have to reiterate this in 2024—but blackface has never and won’t ever be OK. There’s a way to dress up as another race or ethnicity without actually invoking their race into the equation. So it would behoove these students and others like them to lean into dressing up in that way moving forward.