Okay, in all honesty no one ever said the word “racist” yesterday. The lack of laughs and the cringing and a lot of people making that “ehhhhh” sound when they don’t really know what to tell you certainly implied that people may have found my work racist. I don’t know. I haven’t felt good about it for the last 36 or so hours for many reasons. I’ll break them down as soon as I explain what happened.

I had my first Sketch 201 class at UCB yesterday. I decided I would bring in a sketch where two white people tell a black man to stop eating chicken because he’s perpetuating a stereotype and it’s making them uncomfortable. Is that the safest choice on the first day? No. Can that sort of thing be funny? Yes. And I’m not the edgy guy! I’m not looking to ruffle feathers. I’m not trying to drop some truth on people. 

This is the page people seemed to hate the most:

As I see it, you have two horrible people and they’re ruining an innocent person’s lunch because they think they’re helping. Racism is being played for laughs, yes, BUT the characters saying those racist things don’t think there’s anything wrong with that they’re saying and while they are hurtful, the joke is that these idiots have no idea that the outrageous things they’re saying would upset anyone. 

Now, I think that’s funny. I think someone watching a person sit alone and eat lunch being compared to a race riot is ridiculous and if I saw someone do that I would laugh. It’s offensive, but it’s such an extreme overreaction that you have to laugh at it. 

I might be asking a lot of people. I don’t mean to sound arrogant when I say that sort of thing might be for a specific audience. A lot of people already don’t like racial humor and I’ve got racist language being directed at a black man by white people. It’s… difficult. Sure. Still, if you’re looking for jokes about an absurd, nonexistent form of political correctness, you’ll see it. If you’re looking for racism, you’ll see it. 

Also, the very next sketch we read involved genocide. Zero dissenting voices on that one, and the Croatian war of independence wasn’t exactly a laugh riot. 

The inspiration for this sketch was also a point of contention because I once felt the way the white customers did in the sketch. Working in a car dealership you find yourself floating in a sea of casual racism, so you can imagine the horror when I saw our ONE black employee eating fried chicken. I thought “I have to get out of here” because I knew someone was going to come in and say something.

When did you have your last argument with a racist? You didn’t just hear something racist, or yell at a racist, but actually argued with one. At this point in time, a racist trying to prove his point WILL bring up something like Obamaphone and then say “That’s what they’re like.” Which any reasonable person would disagree with. Being white, I’d take issue if someone wanted to lump me in with the overwhelming majority of school shooters and serial killers. 

So when you see someone from a group you defend doing something stereotypically negative, you go “Well this will be an argument.” Not that black people ever asked me to defend them, and not that I HAVE to argue every time.

I felt the same way when I saw a Chevy Volt stopped on the side of the road. I wanted to cover it with a blanket lest a Rush Limbaugh listener see it and have their confirmation bias as confirmed as ever.

Maybe my old job wasn’t the best place for me to be intellectually, but my brain is broken now and this is how I think. 

Some other complaints were made. The Shirley Chisolm line was singled out as “something someone might actually say” if they wanted to racially abuse someone. 

Yeah. Bill Cosby when he’s yelling at kids to pull their pants up. Racists don’t know who Shirley Chisolm is. And you could say “Alright, well switch her name with Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks” but racists wouldn’t even do that. They don’t think. Far too much credit is being given to a group of people who choose to express themselves by making monkey noises at soccer games.

This may just be an enormous hissy fit because people didn’t like my sketch. I don’t know. If it isn’t funny, fine. As much as I fancy myself the one arbiter of good taste in this world, my powers are pretty limited. If you’re not receptive to the sketch because it deals with race the way it does, then that’s lame. This sketch is a few things, and one of them might be “completely unfunny”, but I can say with some certainty that it isn’t racist.

netscapeshawty:

• gerald wallace is a cancer to the nba he needs to be eliminated

You guys my MA’AM post is up I am going to reblog it for your reading pleasure. 

Today I ate lunch while sitting on an upturned milk crate and if I ever win an Emmy I will mention this.