Justin Bieber Apologizes for Racist Joke Video

Justin Bieber has once again found himself in a situation that requires an apology.

A video from 2011 surfaced over the weekend that shows Bieber telling a racist joke and using the N-word. As a result, Bieber has released a statement to apologize. Now, I'd speculate that the apology is in the wake of an uproar over the video, but I haven't actually seen anyone get that upset about this until the Biebs put out this statement, so maybe he's actually trying to get out in front of this before it explodes into something he and his PR team can't control (not that they've been doing that great a job of controlling any of his innumerable foibles over the past several months; but hey, having some control over a situation is better than having none). Here's the offending video in question:

So...yeah. That happened. And now, so has an apology. If nothing else, the following statement at least shows a certain level of self-awareness in Bieber, which I suppose means progress:

"I’m very sorry," said Bieber, in the statement released to the Associated Press. "I take all my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologize for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable behavior. I thought it was ok to repeat hurtful words and jokes, but I didn’t realize at the time that it wasn’t funny and that in fact my actions were continuing the ignorance. Thanks to friends and family I learned from my mistakes and grew up and apologized for those wrongs. Now that these mistakes from the past have become public I need to apologize again to all of those who I have offended."

Bieber went on to declare that "ignorance has no place in our society, and I hope the sharing of my faults can prevent others from making the same mistake in the future. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say but telling the truth is always what’s right. ... Once again ... I’m sorry."

Bieber was 15-years-old at the time the video, which was before anyone knew he had a penchant for making these kinds of public mistakes. What's stranger about all this, though, is that the clip is part of unused footage from Bieber's 2011 concert documentary Never Say Never, which suggests this has been sitting in a vault somewhere for nearly four years, instead of being burned like you would expect his PR team to have done. Why this video is surfacing now, of all times, is anyone's guess. But I feel the same can be said of just about anything Bieber does these days.

So what do you think? Overreaction? Or another case of Bieber's systemic bad behavior? Sound off in the comments!

Via: Associated Press / Entertainment Weekly

Credit: NBC