THE Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week found himself in a whole load of trouble after pictures showed him having blackened his face up when he was a school teacher.

He can’t even remember how many times he did it.

I was a bit surprised that he was doing this when he was 29 years old. He can’t even blame being young. There really are no excuses despite the fact that he has been championing the rights of minorities for many years as Prime Minister.

He added that he never talked about it publicly because he was embarrassed and went on to say it is something he deeply regrets and should not have done.

The whole furore will no doubt affect his re-election chances.

If we had one of the right-wing leaders on the planet doing this would we really have anyone trying to make excuses for it?

Blackening your face up is probably one of the most offensive things you can do. And if you can’t find it offensive in any way then you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Some people might say it has got to do with the reasoning behind the blackening up. Not really sure what that means. If you’re blackening up you are clearly doing it to darken your skin and pretend to be black and joke about another’s skin colour.

I recollect many of the most famous films and stars of the golden age of cinema who were happy enough to blacken their faces up. Some of our most famous films are still praised despite including overtly racist segments.

On the same premise, growing up I also used to see a whole load of white actors portraying other ethnicities. This to me was equally offensive.

I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult to just get someone from that ethnicity to play the role in question. How hard would it have been?

It is a practice that still takes place in some films and programmes today. Have we become so lazy that we can’t find a middle eastern person to play an Arab?

Anyone who says this is simply a western phenomenon would be wrong.

I have seen many Bollywood films who are equally offensive when they get Indian actors to blacken up or even portray those of a Chinese background in an offensive manner.

In fact, we have scenes in films only going back to the nineties where south Asian actors are blackening up.

Whoever does it and whenever they do it, it is just wrong on so many levels.