Comedy: Crossing Racial, Ethnic & Cultural Lines

“Hey, have you heard the one about the rabbi, the priest and the Baptist minister? Or the one that starts, “your mama is so ugly, is she…?” Or maybe you can finish the joke that starts, “Take my wife….”

Laughter, like music, is a universal language. But do the things that make me laugh, make you laugh, too? How much do ethnic and cultural norms determine what makes us laugh?

In the 1970s, comedian Richard Pryor added the N-word to his comedy routine. Though it was shocking at first, over time many people began to accept Pryor’s rationale that using racial slur in a humorous context took the sting out of the word. Audiences began to laugh with him. However, when comedian and actor Michael Richards of the “Seinfeld” fame used the same word during a 2006 rant directed at African-American hecklers at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Hollywood, nobody laughed.

“Good comedy isn’t offensive just for the sake of being offensive,” said comedian and actor Paul Rodriguez, co-owner of the Laugh Factory and host of its Latino Night for 27 years.

“If you are not African-American, you shouldn’t use the N-word, but then the people who use the N-word are the ones who themselves feel offended by the word. Michael Richards was wrong; he only mentioned it six times,” Rodriguez joked.

Rodriguez, 52, star of the 1984 sitcom “a.k.a. Pablo,” was the first Mexican-American in the U.S. to have his own weekly show. He said comedy can be used to educate, make political statements and to simply entertain.

To appreciate the American sense of comedy and to interpret it through racial and ethnic lenses, most comedians say that people must first understand America’s history. Today’s generation of comedians are building on the political satire and lampooning that began with political cartoons and blossomed on vaudeville stages.

“I do believe that groups that have been traditionally oppressed or ostracized depend more on comedy, hence, the plethora of Jewish comedians,” said Rodriguez, who peppered his interview with USARiseUp with one-liners and jokes.

“The Jewish people have pride and a certain kind of irony when looking at the World,” he said.

Cornelia Cody, an adjunct professor at New York University, teaches a class on humor. She agrees with Rodriguez. “We start off with Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry Davis,” she said. An inordinate number of comics from the previous era came out of Brooklyn and were largely Jewish,” said Cody, who is completing her doctorate in American Studies with a focus on humor and folklore.

She said Jewish comics have a tradition of turning pain, distance and intellect into something funny. “People have discovered that the smarter you are, the funnier you are. To be funny, it really requires intelligence,” she said.

Grace White, a comedian who describes herself as a middle-aged white, Scottish, Native American woman, said the best comedy deals with truth.

“My jokes are about my truths and my life experiences. My favorite all-time comic was Richard Pryor. He would tell you the truth even when you didn’t want to hear it,” said White, who lives in Los Angeles. “When you are in a comedy club and a comedian is performing, you are in the moment – together. You are involved in that person’s story.”

White said that when comedy is authentic, it appeals to people across ethnic and gender lines.

“When [Pryor] was talking about how his wife was leaving him and he shot up his car, he was truthful in talking about the insurmountable dynamics of relationships. I feel like I have done that,” said White. “I am an old hippie chick and the majority of the people I perform in front of are not old hippie chicks. But everyone has had someone in the family mother – a sister or an aunt – who is an old hippie. Audiences can smell your truth.”

Pryor, who died in 2005, starred in several movies, and is recognized as one of the modern fathers of social comedy. Many believe Dave Chappelle, stand-up comedian and star of Comedy Central’s “Dave Chappelle Show,” is Pryor’s heir apparent.

Chappelle, in an interview with James Lipton for the television show “Inside the Actors Studio,” also praised Pryor for his willingness to stand before an audience and talk candidly and often crudely about his personal life.

“The truth is permanent and everything else falls to the wayside,” Chappelle said. You don’t know if you went too far, until you cross the line.”

Pushing the Limits

Comedian Raj Sharma even jokes about 9/11.

“My opening joke is, ‘I was born and raised Hindi, but after 9/11, I converted to Hispanic. It just gets me through the airport a lot quicker,” said Sharma, who began his comedy career six years ago. Sharma said he uses this specific joke with all of his audiences.

“They are getting the joke from my perspective. They are going, ‘Ah, yes, I feel the same way.’ I get this huge laugh. I’m sure those guys have been harassed at an airport too.”

Sharma and other comics say that it is, of course, easiest to speak directly to audiences who have the same ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds as themselves.

An example is his joke about the Danish butter cookie tin. “You will always see a blue tin at an Indian home. It is always filled with thread, buttons and needles. It is what everybody got for Christmas. The Danish butter cookie tin stays around forever. There will never, ever, be cookies in it,” said Sharma, who performs at corporate events.

Clearly, Danish cookie tins are not inherently funny to non-Indian audiences. Indian audiences laugh at the joke because it reminds them of home and pokes fun at a very specific aspect of their culture. People are most likely to laugh hardest at the things they know best. That is why family life, parents, spouses, girlfriends, or boyfriends are such fertile ground for comedians.

Yet while there are some aspects of family relationships that are universal across cultures, other aspects are unique to certain cultures or groups. 42-year-old Da’Mone Jones said people have been telling him his whole life that he was funny. He took a class on comedy before taking the stage at a local Improv club.

“Funny is funny to me. If I am performing for a Caucasian crowd, all I have to do is slow down the joke; they’re interested in cleverness. A lot of black comedians rant or speak really fast and the white folks say, ‘What did he say?’ They look for punch lines and look for the cleverness of jokes,” said Jones, who has kept his day job as a barber in Arlington, Texas.

“You can use the same joke, but you have to use different styles. I talk about global news, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Dr. Phil – [topics] that I can use anywhere. His best material, Jones said, comes from his family and barbershop customers.

“I have a joke about my couin who is in a wheel chair. He has been paralyzed from the waist down for 15 years. He is always asking everybody in the family for a loan. He asked to borrow some money from me and I asked him when he was going to pay me back. He says, ‘When I get back up on my feet’,” Jones said laughing. “In his reality, he is never going to get back on his feet. You caught that in your head and the one who caught it is still laughing. You can’t step on your laugh; you have to wait for it to die down and start over. It is a universal joke. It is not black or white. You can take that home with you. That is my whole goal of comedy – to give you something you can take home.”