the blueshift journal

Interviewer: Could we start off with the basics of who you are and what you do?

 

Baratunde: I am a television host, I’m a stand-up comedian, I’m a writer. I travel and a do a lot of public talks. I worked for the Onion for five years... right now I’m most focused on trying to develop a TV show. I just launched a podcast about race--it launched today through Slate’s podcast platform called Panoply. It’s called “Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race.” I have some co-hosts: Raquel Cepeda and Tanner Colby.... I’m a nerd, politico, humor person, and generally happy human being, hopping between Los Angeles and New York City.

 

Interviewer: I know your book How To Be Black details some of your upbringing, but is there one specific moment, event, or thought that you think your audience would need to know?

 

Baratunde: ….Honestly, it’s not from my childhood, but something happened to me a few years ago. I was apartment hunting in Boston, for my first apartment out of college--I graduated college in 1999--with a friend of mine who is also Black. He was born in Congo, largely raised in Chile. He and I were working with this White real estate broker in a neighborhood called Somerville, next to Cambridge and across the road from Boston. We’re hungry for a home. The real estate guy learned about another member of our roaming group who wasn’t there [at the time]--an Indian dude, Ramesh. We mentioned that it was actually three of us, including Ramesh, and he says, “Oh, what kind of name is that?” We tell him it’s Indian, and he’s like, “Oof, I don’t know about that. Indian people always make the place smell bad. They’ve got a kind of funk about them.” He was joking about the smell of Indian people and how hard it is to rent apartments to them.

 

And we were silent in that moment. We didn’t defend Ramesh, we didn’t defend Indian people. We didn’t tell this guy to fuck off because that’s just an inappropriate way to talk about folks... We just kept our mouths shut... We’ve joked about it since, in moments of racial shame. As Black people, we’ve gotten stuff like this all the time, and you want someone to stand up for you when you’re not there to stand up for yourself. It’s like we failed the test of being a racial justice allies in that moment. It’s something I’ve thought about since then: If you have the opportunity to stand up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves, you’ve got to take it. Otherwise people won’t just change on their own. The world won’t more forward magically on some sense of momentum and progress. It takes a bunch of little moments like that of people stepping up--like saying, “Actually, I don’t know what you mean by that.” Maybe you could joke with them back about a friend. But silence is never a good option in a situation like that, and I think there’s something of value in that for your readership community.

 

Interviewer: On your website, you say that you’ve long been taught to question authority. Can you explain this a little to me?

 

Baratunde: My mom was very politically active--an activist in the civil rights movement and in the Black Power movement. She just doesn’t accept a lot of the assumptions about how the country is working, how it should work, and she used to say to me constantly: “Question authority.” She gave me a bumper sticker that I put in my locker in high school, which came from the authority of my mother, ironically. There was something sort of held to me of never assuming that the party that has authority has earned it, and that respect is something that should be earned, and not just assumed. It’s just healthy to maintain the legitimacy of power that you question it on a recurring basis. I think the democratic experiment in America shows how people questioned authority--heck, even Galileo questioned authority in terms of prevailing wisdom of the centrality of the Earth to the moon and stars. And Columbus questioned authority. Authority, it helps keeps society tied together, but blind following is very unhealthy and you should question leadership on a regular basis.

 

Interviewer: In immersing yourself in the world of humor, has questioning authority been one of, if not your main goal? It’s funny, because my last interview I did with Kenneth Cooper, and he talked about how it’s frustrating that people in media don’t question people enough.

 

Baratunde: Yeah. The court jester in a monarchy is challenging the king in an acceptable, somewhat non-threatening, and disguised manner...  There’s a formal place for that in society. Comedians in general do that--they question our conventional wisdom, they question our relationship status, they question how we use social media, they question political correctness. They question leadership and authority and culture and power. They have the ability to do that in a way that can be fun and can make you laugh and think in an indirect way. Often versus a politician or religious figure questioning authority with some presumed agenda. Or a journalist doing the same thing.

 

Look at the White House Correspondents’ dinner where Colbert hit that hot water mark of questioning authority when he directly challenged Bush in a way that so many journalists hadn’t. There was this deference for access to the White House, not shaking the boat too much with any establishment of journalistic institutions. Job security, whatever it is, encourages people to hold back. Comedians often have a little wider latitude because they’re held to a different standard. And when you flirt with that line between a joke and legitimacy, often that tension is an opportunity to ask some really hard questions.

 

Interviewer: What do you think are the faults of comedy as a means of questioning authority?

 

Baratunde: Another example I’ll throw in on that--more of a cultural one--is Bill Cosby and the comedy of Hannibal Buress, which help crack an already cracked armor and have shifted the conversation about this one heroic figure in American culture into, “No, he’s a serial rapist and a horrible, dangerous human being. We should not be celebrating him any more.” There have been a lot of articles written about this by journalists, and there were groups who weren’t happy with Bill Cosby but have protected him, and many in power protected him. And it was a fellow comedian, who is also Black and also male, who helped bring him down. A thousand op-eds couldn’t do that any more than the voices of the women who had been violated by this dude. I think this is a very powerful example of comic power in questioning authority.

 

As for what could go wrong--there’s a balance sometimes. Who is the authority that you’re questioning? Are you picking on weak people in society? Are you being a dick? Are you just being mean? Are you being a bully and using the excuse of, “Oh, I was just joking” to imply horrible things about people. It often comes up with right-wing radio talk shows....They say something offensive and then somebody finds out about it, and they’re like, “Oh no, I’m joking. I was just being funny.” No, you can’t talk about reinstating slavery--that’s not funny, that’s just fucked up. They hide behind the license that comedy allows people to promote their backward ideas. Anybody can ask questions, anybody can treat something as an authority, and I think there are ways that that powerful action of questioning authority can be abused.

 

Interviewer: I’m taking this class called Critical Race Theory. It’s taught by this wonderful lady who went to Stanford. We had an emotional discussion in which she was contemplating the question of how to keep the middle-class White jockey, conservative-leaning male comfortable in conversations concerning the unjust power dynamics and institutional racism in this country. Lots of times, conversations usually revolve around, “It’s the White guy’s fault,” and this inevitably alienates and demonizes these people. She was talking about how there might be a responsibility to cater to these people, and she said one of the ways to do this was through comedy. Comedy is the unifying thing that everyone can relate to and enjoy. What do you think about that?

 

Baratunde: Well, I certainly am a fan of anything that promotes what I’ve chosen to do with my life, so thank that professor for promoting my industry. Might increase my rates now, since I’m making a lot of people feel a lot more comfortable. And her original point, with or without comedy, is really important. There have been a lot of gains for women, for LGBTQ people, for people of color, so that, if you’re just keeping score, as a upper-class heterosexual White dude who used to run everything, you kind of feel like you’re losing. Nothing is going up for you in the narrative where we have a Black president, transgender bathrooms, and everyone wants a female, unicorn, lesbian midget to be their representative. We live in different times now, and that’s good for the whole, but there’s been a lack of conscious consideration for what happens to White people, especially poor White people... all the jobless shit that they’re going through and the ease with which that community can scapegoat Mexicans, gays, or Muslims for all their problems. Because to them, it looks like they’re on the losing end of “progress”--it’s progress for everyone except for them.

 

It’s important for us to think about how to include the now slightly less all-powerful, but still quite advantaged, in this discussion of a better America, a more diverse America. Comedy is a way to do that. Art, in general, helps things go down, but comedy is just especially good at pushing down the pill--dip that sour taste in honey and try to have different perspectives on what’s really happening. There’s great news in this transition to a more diverse workplace and economy. You can sell your stuff around the world. You can put your stuff in other languages. You can double your sales figures. You can have an insurance policy against evasion. If you have more people on your team, you have more people on your side and defending you. The more people we think of as American, it’s selfishly good for everyone who considers himself to be an American. We have more interracial dating and procreation; that reduces our risk for disease by mixing up the gene pool.

 

There are a lot of advantages to White people overall if they start considering themselves not just as White people, White men who are losing shit, but if they were like, “Oh, the whole neighborhood is more Brazilian! Look at that.” And it lightens the burden, honestly. If you see them raised in a tradition of White heterosexual men won the world--that’s a lot of responsibility! You’ve got to stop war. You’ve got to feed people. The climate’s wonky and you’ve got to fix that too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some help in that? So yeah, just consider us help.

 

Interviewer: Why do you think that racially charged comedy is so popular amongst Americans? Why do you think comedians like Kevin Hart and Chris Rock find so much fame when joking about their upbringings as Black individuals?

 

Baratunde: I don’t know if I agree with the premise, but let’s say I do for the sake of argument. There’s not many places in America where we can actually talk about race. I mean, there’s my podcast, there’s academic classes on university campuses, which are not very accessible places in terms of public discourse--I mean, most people will never be in that Critical Race Theory class of yours. Either they’re not in college or if they are, they’re not in that class. It’s not mandatory, it’s in another department, it’s on the edge of campus. So there’s a lot of unresolved issues in the country about race. We just never dealt with it. We felt good about not having slaves anymore--and that was really great--but we can stop patting ourselves on the back over that decision, which was a pretty long time ago. Same with the lynching and Jim Crow laws--like, good, we don’t deserve more cookies for some basic human rights stuff, as we’ve expanded our definition of human rights over generations.

 

So when you have a very important topic--race is still very important, it determines people’s outcomes and is responsible for all kinds of implicit bias in decisions and people’s life, liberty, and happiness. You have race as a central figure in that, but no one talks about it in general because it’s taboo. In the general public sphere, it’s not a big topic in presidential debates--Starbucks tried it and look what happened to them. “Don’t fuck with my coffee!” Like, really, I don’t care about your coffee. Racism happens everywhere. Why the fuck not when you’re drinking coffee? At any rate, I think a comedian who takes that on and talks about things we all know is important but that no one talks about releases pressure in the system. It’s a release to hear somebody explain why differences are so different, to rant about their skin and law enforcement, or to talk about cultural interactions across lines in a way that is kind of safe because they’re making jokes about it, too. And it’s not hate speech, and it’s not some kind of pedantic lecture. It ties in the common humanity of all of us...

 

Interviewer: What do you suggest that people in my generation do to make America better in the context of race and race relations?

 

Baratunde: Do something. That’s the first step. Doing nothing is not a great option. We don’t solve problems by doing nothing, and this is still a major problem in our society. We don’t win wars without doing something, we don’t get to the moon without doing something. There is a large menu of possible action to take. Some of it is very passive: consuming different media, getting out of your bubble. We’re still in a relatively segregated society even with all the legislative work that’s been done. Most of us live with people of our same race and class and don’t encounter someone different. So try to get with someone different, even if it’s just through the media you consume: through books, through TV, through film. We need to constantly try to get out of our own bubble so that we can see the commonalities between us.

 

There’s an extra step that’s worth taking, which is to fight for somebody else. In my book, W. Kamau Bell is one of the people I interviewed--he’s a comedian, and I asked everyone on the panel of my book, “What would you like to see for the future of race relations and identity in America?” And he had a really cool idea. He said he wants to see everyone work for another group. Like, women, you have to fight for trans people. Trans people, you have to fight for Mexicans. Mexicans, you have to fight for Muslims. Muslims, you have to fight for gays. We don’t all get out of our bubbles even as activists. We’re not really making progress--we’re not moving the whole thing forward. You can’t solve racism and make sexism worse--you have to move it all forward together.

 

So my advice is to the next generation is to think outside of yourself--get exposure to ideas outside of yourself--and to take action outside of yourself. It’s really take some deep empathy and deep camaraderie. Don’t do what I did in that car with the Boston real estate agent. Stand up for your Indians who probably won’t ruin an apartment with their smell. That’s generally not how people work.

 

Interviewer: Obviously you’ve made a point to find an intersection between your identity and comedy. What then do you make of the word “Black” preceding your job title of comedian and preceding whatever you do?

 

Baratunde: It’s not like I can complain about being called Black when I wrote a book called How To Be Black. I recognize the limits of that, but honestly I have not suffered from that excessive labeling syndrome as much other people might have. I don’t generally see people calling me the Black writer from x company. They would say I was the Black one with the Onion because I was the one for a long time. But that was legitimately pointing out the exceptional population difference, not like I was somehow Black in all of my work there. I wasn’t--I was always Black, but I wasn’t being actively Black while working there. So I feel pretty liberated in owning my own identity and my Blackness. I don’t feel the need to preface everything I do. I’m not like a Black uberX driver or Black dental appointment person. I’m just a happy Obamacare user. So I don’t feel persecuted or confined by it. I think people should be free to label themselves as they want to do and to feel how they authentically are... I don’t go to the extreme of saying, “I am not a Black writer!” But yeah, I am. I don’t need to deny my obvious racial connection and phenotype. It’s just not that big of a deal to me.