The Joke or the Joker

So, Imus is gone. Not just off MSNBC but also off the radio.

*snap* Things change. Quickly.

In the course of a week, I heard 2 prominent, well known comedians make racist comments. One had no repercussions. One lost his job.

The first comment was a joke told by Whoopi Goldberg. She had a special on Bravo that Christi and I happened to catch a week ago. She introduced the last joke she told by telling the audience "the community" would not approve. One can assume "the community" was the black community. She told the joke, the punchline had God uttering the "n" word to a child, and everyone, including me, laughed. She said she would not use "that" word again.

While the audience was still laughing Whoopi told everyone to think about why they were laughing. I have thought about it.

I think a black person telling a joke using white racist attitudes as the punchline gives all of us white people permission to laugh at it. I know for myself that had the same joke been told by Michael Richards, Jerry Seinfeld, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers or any other white comic, I would have been horrified and would have been embarrassed by my desire to laugh. But Whoopi's telling the joke meant I could laugh with her, loudly, unashamed, guilt-free. But Whoopi wasn't laughing herself. She was teaching.

The other comment was said by Don Imus, a very funny, in your face, radio personality. In the 1970's I listened to Don Imus regularly. Back then he made fun of southern preachers and cracker sterotypes. He had a favorite character named Billy Saul Hargas from the Discount House of Worship. He was hysterically funny and I would laugh whenever I heard him.

Imus' comments last week were not a punchline or a satirical monologue. He was joking around with a friend, a producer of his radio show. His comments weren't funny to anyone else but the two of them. His reference to the Rutger's Women Basketball Varsity team as "nappy-headed ho's" is not funny in any context except as a private joke between racist buddies. His mistake was that he said it all on air. That he didn't hesitate to air those comments, or even catch himself or apologize or clean them up somehow immediately after making them, says to me that the man doesn't have a clue that those comments reveal his racist beliefs.

I wish I could say I was so enlightened as to not have a racist bone in my body. I can't say that. But I know enough to know when a comment or thought is racist and that it should be censored. I believe racism and racist thoughts are habitual, even after one has examined these beliefs and discarded them. The true test of discarding racism is not in intellectually understanding the unreasonableness of your attitudes and ideas, but in doing the work day after day of not laughing at jokes, even when safe, not allowing those thoughts to go unchecked in your own mind, not seeking out others who will "enjoy" it and not be offended by those thoughts or comments. That's the hard part of reforming racist attitudes.

Imus has said he is not a racist, that he had no racist intent. In the past he has publicly vowed not to use racial epithets. I think Imus got fired because he still didn't know that it was not ok to do that privately and certainly not publicly if you want to break the habit of racism.