I went to a comedy show recently. I’d rather not say who the headliner was, but I was pretty disappointed. The brother made a lot of racial jokes to a largely white (and predictably so) audience and I didn’t find them to be that funny. I’ve seen comedians of all races do hilarious routines about ethnicity and culture…this wasn’t that. It seems like shocking, potentially offensive material- particularly related to race, sex, gender or bodily functions- is the go to place for comics who aren’t so great at stand-up.
While there is a level of pride and guardianship I feel in relation to my race, I can laugh at us in front of others. People of all races do silly stuff, we can’t always take ourselves or our missions so seriously that we lose our ability to be human. But there is a difference between a “oh, my people, my people” joke and saying things about Black people to White people as if you also existed outside of the group. As the young man made one uncomfortable quip after another, it seemed to me that this brother needed some Black friends. Black people who tend to exist in primarily White or multi-cultural environments seem to lose their emotional proximity to the community sometimes. There is nothing wrong with having mixed friend or work circles, but when you start taking on those same disdainful attitudes about your people that others have…that’s not really awesome.
The comedian seemed to have forgotten one of the most important commandments that any person with a Black mother or grandmother has surely heard: “Don’t embarrass me in front of these White folks.”
I’d put down money that damn near every Black person in America was told that in some shape or fashion as a child. Perhaps it was phrased a little differently- “Please be on your best behavior today” or “Remember: we aren’t on 79th Street, these people don’t know us“, but the message was the same. It’s not that our elders placed some elevated significance on the opinions of White people; rather, they understood something that often takes years of Black living to grasp. You see, when you are dealing with a group of people that views you with a negative bias, anything you do wrong will be used as fodder to justify those notions they already have. Or, in plainer terms, you just given them a reason to believe what they already believed.
3-6-Mafia is actually in the “Embarrassed Us in Front of White Folks Hall of Shame”, along with Clarence “Is this a pubic hair on my Coke can?” Thomas and the cast of “Homeboys In Outer Space”.
It was a confusing concept for me as a kid; we lived in a mixed neighborhood and interactions with White people weren’t really infrequent. But on those occasions when we were in the minority and I was showing the potential to cut up in someway, my mom was quick with those words: “Don’t embarrass me in front of these White folks!” I get it now and I’ve even had to repeat the sentiment, albeit worded a bit differently, to some children over the years.
This is a notion that undoubtedly existed long before we could all drink from the same water fountains. Back when textbooks and psuedo-science described inherent Black deficiency as evidence that we were unworthy of equal treatment. You have a group of people that has had the power to, at times, make us feel were ‘less than’, sometimes simply by the virtue of their presence. And the desire to be treated like human beings has sometimes found people losing their actual humanity in the process. The complete fallacy of White supremacy brings a lot of us to the “I don’t care what White people think” stage of coping. As true as that statement rings for me on a few issues (namely this one and this one), we do unfortunately have to reconcile the fact that the thoughts of White folks about Black folks as they relate to race can have a profound effect upon our lives. And as we are so often judged as a group for the actions of one or a few, you end up hearing ‘enlightened Black folks such as myself worrying over something so silly as being embarrassed in front of a group of people who got about as much a right to judge us as Beyonce does the “Best Actress” category of a high school talent show.
So while the young White woman sitting across from the Black teens on the bus acting a fool may have a ton of Black friends and draw no conclusions from their behavior, without that information, I can’t help but to wish those kids wasn’t embarrassing me in front of them White folks.
Being well mannered in public or being careful not to go in on your own people in a comedy act won’t effect the necessary paradigm shift that must occur amongst White Americans in order to dismantle racism. And I won’t let the desire to be humanized in the eyes of White folks be the death of my humanity. I won’t pretend to be perfect or impeccably mannered at all times in order to prove myself worthy of their respect. But I’m not gonna lie: I don’t like being embarrassed in front of White folks. Am I alone here?
You are not alone. I have heard it before and said it to my kids.
Not at all.
I attend a pretty diverse college, that likes to pretend it’s an HBCU on hot days. This past week in particular, I’ve felt like this. I see some of the younger girls, and I have had to pull them to the side and say something along the lines of “I know your mama taught you better.”
When I see girls walking around with their actual a.ss cheeks out, or guys climbing on the guardrails cursing like they are not students at a “good” university, I just hear the comments I got in my first few weeks from white students replay in my mind: “Oh, what scholarship are you on?” “Oh your mother works for the uni hospital? *That’s* how you got in the honors program!”
While *I* know some of these young men & women are scholars and community servants, the rest of the student body doesn’t, and I don’t want to keep this fallacy that most fo the students who look like US got where we are just because of handout or hookup.
OMG I’m laughing at ur wit, yet in such agreement. I was too thru with the Oscars after “Hard Out Here for a Pimp” actually won. That’s how I confirmed that we were being mocked. It’s always some sort of underlined speculation, but nope, not that time. It was a slap in the face. Actors like Denzel/Halle get passed over for their outstanding performances for Malcolm X (not surprised about that one) or John Q or Remember the Titans or Dorothy Dandridge but win oscars for playing a bad cop and a whore. I woulda felt better if she won an Oscar for B.A.P.S. instead of Monster’s Ball….well, maybe not. lol
People of all races do silly stuff, we can’t always take ourselves or our missions so seriously that we lose our ability to be human <— Sorry this is beside the subject. I'm just glad you said this…but back to the point.
I know exactly what you mean. I see these children day in and day out. Acting a fool on public transportation, scaring everybody including the black and white folks. I pray for our youth everyday, but the comedian…smh. I see it everyday.
Great post, public transportation is the site of most of these cringe worthy events.
I tell my son all the time, even when he’s not with me, you let ME catch you on the train acting a fool and it’s over for you, or if any other person comes to me, saying, I saw your son, OH NO!!!
I’m printing this out, so he can read it and understand, I’m not the only adult that feels that way.
Thanks.
The only people that can embarrass you in front of anybody are:
1. you
2. any people you’ve chosen to be accompanied by, and
3. any offspring or other people you’ve raised
Great post. Enjoyed reading the article and the responses. However, comedians and musical groups that perform on stage are doing a job. The real issue I see here is people getting paid for “bad” or embarrassing work. But then I think, who continues paying for these types work?
now you know why multiculturalism is being pushed soooo hard. the biracial/MC gets to hide his blackness in plain site and both he and his white cohorts get to pretend they cant see the blackness. unless need a reminder. guy gets a nice white pass and whites can bash blacks with the blessing of their token darkie….ahh i mean biracial/MC friend. Expect more of this behaviour, you think Toure is bad. Wait till u see what colleges are preparing to spew forth!
I completely feel you on this one. To date, I haven’t watched ThreeSixMafia’s performance cause I know that it’s the pinnacle of cringe-worthy moments.
Re: the Hall of Fame, I’d also like to nominate a former co-worker who brought pigs feet to a Brown Bag Seminar. I sh*t you not. I almost quit that day out of embarassment by association.
These are the same sentiments I sometimes feel about eating chicken or drinking grape juice in front of White people. (Whenever I go out I usually order fish.) Is it silly? Sure. However, I feel that, as an individual, if I can provide a different perspective by thinking differently or even ‘acting’ differently, then I should. This “non-comedian” you speak of … I wasn’t there so I can’t really call it, but he must lack some social graces do have made you feel uncomfortable. 99% of the music on I hear on the radio makes me feel the same way; it’s doubly embarrassing then to hear a White person utter, ‘that’s that “real” hip hop right there’ – and Gucci Mane is playing. Dammit!
Okay, once last year when I was substitute teaching at a suburban high school, I had to close the damn door and give a Don’t Embarrass Me In Front of These White Folks SEMINAR.
The math teacher I was subbing for had mostly white classes with a few chocolate chips sprinkled here and there. She had two regular (non-AP) classes. One was maybe 1/5 Black/Latino and the second was at least 85% Black/Latino.
Do you know that at least three teachers warned me about the 85% “of color” class?? Whoa, boy. These kids knew they were the school badasses, too. As soon as I passed out their assignment, they told me they weren’t going to do the work that EVERY OTHER CLASS HAD DONE because “they never do work.”
It was apparent they had been living in suburbia so long that they believed all the ugly things “these white folk” had to say about them. When I detailed to them just how poor of a reputation they had as a group and asked them to consider whether that reputation had anything to do with the racial/ethnic makeup of the students in the room, it was like a light bulb turned on in those kids’ heads. It was as though nobody had ever told them that as minority children in an overwhelmingly white school, they stick out like sore thumbs and that their skin color made it easy for folks anticipating their failures to spot them should they even THINK about messing up.
Dear God, Black parents. Please do not stop telling your children not to embarrass us in public. If you do, when they go out in the world and are inevitably treated like idiots, criminals and lowlifes by the swaths of the majority who fall somewhere on the spectrum between well-meaning but still a little bit oblivious and David Duke, they will QUICKLY become what they are already imagined to be.
I’ve gotten this before as child, but even around black folks all children should retain a level of restrain and decorum. In an ideal culture all people would carry themselves with a high level of self worth and confidence. However, some people just have no class. I try not to be embarrassed by their crass and ignorant behavior but sometimes it gets to you. Certain people just don’t know how to act at all. Once we can completely separate their actions from their ethnic background we can say we truly progressed as a society.
Although I completley understand where you are coming from I completely disagree. I truly care less about what white people or anyone else who I don’t know or love thinks of me, or other black people. I don’t say that as a defense mechanism, it’s truly how I think…sometimes to my own detriment. I think it’s a shame that we keep teaching our children this “good black folk” menatality instead of being true to who they are and to be proud of whomever that is whether it be Three Six Mafia or W.E.B. DuBois.
I would also have to disagree, but just lightly only because we all have probably been at a point where we cared about someone else’s perception of “us”. Perfect example would be one cringing when we actually hear an African American athlete give an interview and we aren’t sure if he was drafted from 3rd or 4th grade. The part I disagree with is that we allow others particularly “pilgrims” to paint “us” with a very fine brush while they have an entire oasis of colors, brushes, and canvases to choose from. So yes my mother told me not to embarrass her but that was also in a majority black grocery store with not a white person in site. I think that my mom was more concerned with giving the inkling that this 7yr old was “gonna show out” PERIOD. Furthermore, I think that we easily allow others to dismiss their own faults while adding ours to the THIS IS BLACK LIST. And that single notion is the “whitest” thing since well, the pilgrims.
Preach, sister! I firmly believe anyone who goes the Three Six Mafia route has some internalized racism. Also, 79th Street?! Is someone from Miami?
First off, you are not along in this.
Sencondly, I want to endorse this statement
Dear God, Black parents. Please do not stop telling your children not to embarrass us in public. If you do, when they go out in the world and are inevitably treated like idiots, criminals and lowlifes by the swaths of the majority who fall somewhere on the spectrum between well-meaning but still a little bit oblivious and David Duke, they will QUICKLY become what they are already imagined to be.
First off, you are not alone in this.
Sencondly, I want to endorse this statement (below) made above in the comments by Jen. This is amazingly true. I used to teach 1st grade, and already those kids had internalized ooodles of low self-esteem.
Dear God, Black parents. Please do not stop telling your children not to embarrass us in public. If you do, when they go out in the world and are inevitably treated like idiots, criminals and lowlifes by the swaths of the majority who fall somewhere on the spectrum between well-meaning but still a little bit oblivious and David Duke, they will QUICKLY become what they are already imagined to be.
Bad public behavior and poor manners suck no matter who is doing it.
That being said, I disagree with your premise that entertainers should water down their work, be it music, comedy, drama, or art, to appeal to mass audiences. Truly creative people usually have target audiences. What one group loves, another hates. When we start censoring them for whatever reason, it becomes political.
The GOP, the Tea Party live and die by this rule of appealing only to their base, and they don’t give a hoot about offending black “audiences” that watch their lies, slander and attempts to reverse civil rights on the news. They hate us, period, even the best mannered and most educated among us, especially our President who is the epitome of correct behavior.
If every rap group that embarrasses you disappeared overnight and was replaced by black Frank Sinatra’s, the hardcore racists would still hate us, and would hate us even more – like they do Barack and Michelle.
This issue of wishing for self-censorship in entertainment is separate from acting appropriately in public and politics.
There is plenty of room for being disgusted by the behavior of some black teens on a bus or some entertainers on stage. However, there’s more room for alarm of and white “conservatives” in both Congress and fixed news, who are trying to rekindle the Civil War – not because of some teens or the rappers, but because of the blacks who achieve.
This was the first I’ve seen the 3-6 Mafia Oscar performance..and I never EVER want to see it again. It put the “H” in horrible. “Embarrassed Us in Front of White Folks Hall of Shame” indeed.