On Friday night, YouTuber, Shane Dawson, made a video apologizing for his past offensive actions, including putting on blackface, saying the “n” word, and joking about pedophilia.
“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 un-tagging my Instagram, literally doing whatever I can to pretend those things didn’t happen,” he said in the video. “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 … This video is coming from a place of just wanting to own up to my shit.”
Hours after the apology was made, an old video resurfaced of Dawson appearing to touch himself in a sexual manner while looking at a poster of an 11-year-old Willow Smith. Both Jaden and Jada Smith called out Dawson on Twitter.
Dawson has not addressed the newly resurfaced clip. It resurfaced after he posted his apology video, so in the apology video, he does not directly apologize for touching himself while looking at the Willow Smith poster. Dawson said in his apology video that he dealt with the pain from his childhood by making inappropriate jokes.
“I swear on my life I am not somebody who would ever talk about a child that in any way was inappropriate,” he said. “That is disgusting, that is gross, it is not something I would ever do. It is something I did for shock value or because I thought it was funny. It’s all gross and I promise that that is not real; that is not me.”