The Unbearable Niceness of the Good Whites
Last week’s Helpful Twitter Thing involving Charlyne Yi and David Cross, wherein Yi recounted a fucked up story of her first meeting with Cross, followed by Cross and his fan’s responses, reminded me of an issue that, let’s call them, uh, people of power and privilege, especially in comedy, seem to have trouble grasping. That is, that, especially as comedy and culture become more diverse, the baseline assumptions about the fundamental goodness of white people (or men, or straight people, or whatever) aren’t necessarily valid.
The initial story and initial bobbled apology have been covered elsewhere, but essentially, the basic facts are that, last week, Charlyne Yi posted a Twitter about how, at their first meeting, David Cross joked about her appearance and then responded to her discomfort with, “what’s a matter? You don’t speak English?? Ching-chong-ching-chong.”
Cross made a couple responses, culminating with this one, which I’ve excerpted part of here.
Now, this is not to pick on David Cross particularly (though, honestly, some of his fans are… the fucking worst). But I wanted to highlight one of the fundamental disconnects that white comedians (and, again, others) frequently miss when crafting their comedy. That is, they assume that when they talk to us, we can all fundamentally agree that they are, come on, you know, good dudes.
Cause let’s take the above argument at face value. When David Cross defends saying “ching chong” at an Asian person by claiming it’s a character, the entire joke then rests on this premise: that the person saying these slurs must be a Bad Person Who Is Not Me, because, naturally, we all know I, a Good Person, would never say those things. That’s it. That’s the whole joke. Since we all agree that I wouldn’t say racist shit, when I do say racist shit, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA lol.
But what’s easy to forget when you’re in a position of power (with straight white guys at the apex of our current geo-political-historical org chart), is that we don’t all share the assumption that you’re a good person – even if you have a public history that places you on the “right” side of issues.
And that’s because people of color (and anyone vulnerable) don’t have the luxury of that assumption. On some level, conscious or not, we always have to be wary of people’s attacks, even unwitting, to our humanity, because we’ve all been disappointed or stabbed in the back enough times by people we like and trust (or want to like and trust) enough times that you’ll have to forgive us if we can’t always give you the benefit of the doubt. Sure, the dude yelling slurs might be joking, but the consequences for you and us differ greatly if he isn’t. And the fact that you don’t seem to know or care that that’s the case makes you immediately suspect.
Now, if it sounds like I’m singling out straight white dudes, in many ways that’s because I am. This behavior, this idea that “everyone agrees I’m a good person” comes directly from being the protagonists of our culture for so very long. Of course, it’s not unique to these guys, but, there’s an unquestionable concentration of this bullshit in that cohort.
So, anyway, white comedians (and people), that’s my short explanation of why you need to up your game with your “ironic racism.” It only works in places where everyone shares your assumptions, and, guess what, because of so many fucked up racist (and other) experiences in your diverse audience’s lives, we always agree that it’s fair to assume that the person saying some racist bullshit is “kidding.”
