This isn't the first time Roseanne Barr made racist comments

• ABC cancelled "Roseanne" after Roseanne Barr made racist remarks on Twitter.
• It's not the first time she's said racist things. She made a vulgar reference comparing Susan Rice to an ape in a now-deleted tweet from 2013.
• Barr has a history of making racist and inflammatory remarks, which makes some question why ABC revived "Roseanne" in the first place.
• The dustup comes amid ABC pulling an episode of "Black-ish" about racism and the NFL protests.

"Roseanne"was cancelled today after its star, Roseanne Barr, compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarett, who is black, to an ape. But it's not the first time the star has made racist remarks.

In 2013, she also called Susan Rice, a National Security Advisor in the Obama administration, "a man with big swinging ape balls" in a now-deleted tweet.

The renewed attention to that earlier tweet — as well as many of Barr's other comment — raises the question of why ABC and other people who worked on "Roseanne" would cut ties only now, instead of years earlier.

Wanda Sykes, a writer and producer on the show, tweeted she wouldn't return to "Roseanne" after the actress's tweet about Valerie Jarett.

And actress Sara Gilbert tried to distance the show from the titular actress.

But Barr's views have been widely known for years.

In the past few years, she promoted the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, which posits that Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizzaria (there is no such thing); suggested that David Hogg, a teenager who survived the Parkland shooting, is a Nazi (he is not); and said that the Jewish financier George Soros, who survived Nazi-occupied Hungary as a teenager, was a Nazi collaborator (also false).

So while ABC is being applauded for cancelling "Roseanne," people are also asking why the show was ever rebooted in the first place.

And at the same time, ABC has come under criticism for pulling an episode of "Black-ish" that addresses racial injustice and NFL protests.

In a segment on MSNBC on Tuesday, Jarrett said that she thinks the dustup around Barr's tweets should be seen as a teaching moment about more casual forms of racism.

"I'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friends and followers who come to their defense," Jarrett said. "The person walking down the street minding their own business and they see somebody cling to their purse or walk across the street. Or every black parent I know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation.... Those ordinary examples of racism that happen every single day."

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