Racist Joke

I’ve only got one joke and it’s probably racist.  Even so, I’m going to tell it.  It only works in context, however, so let me explain.

It was on Thanksgiving several years ago that I came up with the joke.  I was with the usual group of orphans with whom I share the annual Thanksgiving feast.  We were watching the local evening news and a story came on about the following day: Black Friday.

I immediately said, in a faux-urban dialect, my voice simulating outrage triggered by some perceived ethnic slight, “Oh!  So now it’s BLACK Friday, huh?”

The observed half smiles and accompanied sideways glances seemed to say, “Greg, that was kind of funny, but you really shouldn’t say that out loud.  You’re white.”

I’ve stuck with the joke anyway.  I’ve only managed to reprise it around the initial audience, until now.  Also, it only seems to recur in late November, when stories about Black Friday crop up, so I don’t get many opportunities to try it.

The joke came back to me recently.  With this spat of unusually cold weather, traffic reports began mentioning the possibility of black ice.  My mind immediately jumped to, “Oh!  So now it’s BLACK ice, huh?”

At that moment I realized this could be a recurring joke, the basis for a one-trick character that could recur on some sketch comedy show.  Imagine the generic “angry black man” character who thinks anything with the word “black” in it is a slight against his race, which he blows out of proportion again and again.

No, it’s not really funny, but it’s the kind of lazy writing I too often see on Key and Peele: the angry, easily offended stereotype and the easy racial jokes like the Obama Anger Translator or the East/West College Bowl.  For those who don’t watch Key and Peele, the East/West College Bowl is a series of sketches where they exaggerate some of the, shall we say, unique names of today’s college football players.  It was funny the first time, but they’ve returned to the premise too many times.  Write another joke.

During the most recent rehash of the joke which I saw, prior to the sketch, Key and Peele had their studio audience in stitches laughing at the name Silverberry Mouhon, the actual name of a kid who plays football for Cincinnati.  Obviously, had I done that, the Twitterverse and Blogsphere would have been choked with the posts of the outrage brigade collectively shaking their fists at me declaring, “Something something white privilege something something!”

Well, too late; I’ve already done it.  (What else would you expect from me?  I am a white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, Schrödingerian rapist.)

For years, a couple of friends and I voted on a State School of the Week award: an award given to the most embarrassing thing to happen to a public university’s college football program.  These incidents ranged from coaches shoving opposing team’s fans after a loss to fans prematurely celebrating a victory in one end zone while their team loses the game at the other (Kentucky, I’m looking at you).

Eventually, we, too, began recognizing some of college football’s most original appellations.  We named our award after the inaugural recipient, current NFL offensive lineman and former UVA standout D'Brickashaw Ferguson.  Is that racist?  Maybe, but those of you who know Brian, Chris, and I should have expected it.  We’re nothing but a bunch of Saltines.