I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (13 page)

Of course, I won’t actually be waiting for a call to take over the Republican Party. There are much easier and more palatable jobs that I could be doing, like running Godfather’s Pizza. But the fact that the GOP isn’t doing
any
of these somewhat obvious things demonstrates that it’s out of choice. At the end of the day, the Republican Party is less interested in the black
vote
than it is in the black
voter
simply going away. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Republicans’ very own home page,
GOP.com
. Here’s a screen grab as I write:

At the very top are links to subpages for RNC Latinos and RNC Women. But there’s no welcome mat for black Republicans. There’s not even a perfunctory page talking about Rep. Allen West taking on the CBC or what have you. I’m not putting words in their mouth. If you invite two groups into your home and are silent with regard to the third,
at best
you are indifferent to them. That sure don’t sound like Abe Lincoln to me. The man may have been much more racist than people realize, but he wasn’t about to let freed blacks wither away and die.

Here’s where I’d like to point something else out. I began this chapter by mentioning that blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and that certain white groups vote as overwhelmingly for Republicans. These kinds of figures are discussed on the news constantly and are not controversial. It is possible to statistically predict how a certain group will behave in a given context. No one would have an argument with that. After all, demographics are the
basis
of marketing—political and otherwise. Polling is also based on this concept. But there’s another, less positive term for when statistics predict how a certain group will behave in a given context:
stereotyping
. And the predictive power of these models brings me to my next point: that stereotypes exist for a reason.

T
HE
idea that stereotypes are social constructs with no relation to reality is
itself
a social construct with no relation to reality. Every nation, every group on earth, has some stereotype about some other nation or group that is different from them. I bet that even these contemporary Paleolithic societies have jokes about their women and their elderly. When something is a universal element of the human experience, it surely has
some
basis in fact.

Let me give an example to illustrate my point. One time during
the filming of
Studio 60
, I was hanging out backstage with my costar Nate Corddry. Nate mentioned the song “Stairway to Heaven.” I was a little surprised that white Nate listened to soul music. “You like the O’Jays?” I said.

“The O’Jays?” Nate replied. “Who’re the O’Jays?”

“What do you mean? They’re the cats that sing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ ”

He looked at me like I was messing with him. “D.L., ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is by Led Zeppelin. It’s like their biggest song.”

“Really?” I had
no idea
what he was talking about.

“Yeah, it’s on the
Led Zeppelin IV
album. I can’t believe that you don’t know that.”

“Well, I can’t believe you don’t know the O’Jays. Isn’t it funny that you assumed that I would know what you know?”

It should come as no surprise that the black dude liked “Stairway to Heaven” by the O’Jays and the white guy listened to Led Zeppelin’s song of the same name. Like I said:
Stereotypes exist for a reason
. Somehow, when a stereotype is not offensive, we can acknowledge it as a fact. Liking soul music or Led Zeppelin is not offensive to anyone. But if a stereotype
is
offensive, that doesn’t make it
false
. That just makes it an
offensive
fact.

I experience stereotyping
a lot
. There have been many times when I’ve sat in first class on a plane, and the white passengers have questions for me: “What do you do?” “Are you a singer?” “Should I
know
you?” “What’s your name? Everybody knows you, right?” If you see a white guy in first class, he can just be on some business trip for the regional branch of a cell-phone company. But if it’s a
black
dude sitting in first, he’s famous. He’s an athlete or an entertainer. Now, how can I complain about that stereotype when I embody it? I
am
an entertainer. The stereotype, in my case, is
true
.

Why deny that these ideas exist? Someone who denies reality is a crazy person. That’s what being crazy
means
: not being in touch with reality! We all
know
that black people tend to talk loud at the movies. I don’t know why, but I’m
never
shocked when I hear black people yelling at the theater. I might get
annoyed
, but I don’t get
surprised
. Does
anyone
?

Sometimes stereotypes are so spot-on that it’s ridiculous. I’ve seen things that are almost a caricature of real life. When I was in Los Angeles a few years back, I witnessed the aftermath of a car accident on the street. It looked so weird to me, because it was a white dude who had run into an Asian guy. In the back of my mind, I was so convinced that it had to be the Asian’s fault that I started trying to figure out how the Asian guy could have made such an accident happen. The only way it was possible was if the Asian guy had backed into the white dude—which was ridiculous. I turned to the man standing next to me, who had seen the whole thing. “Dude, what did he do?” I joked. “Back up into him?”

“He actually did.”

“
What
?” I thought he was kidding.

“No, that’s actually what happened. He was coming out of the parking space, didn’t look, and backed up into him.”

The stereotype had been justified once again. I know I’m not the only person who thinks like this. It’s a shock when Asians don’t know arithmetic. Everyone assumes that they know all the math. You just
do
. Every time I go get blood taken at the doctor’s, it’s a Filipino nurse. Every. Single. Time. The
New York Times
had a piece about how the shoeshine community is almost exclusively Brazilian dudes. Is the
New York Times
an organ of prejudice and anti-diversity racism? Let’s be real.

What’s amazing to me is when people get in trouble for saying
things that everyone knows to be the truth. You get in more trouble for speaking the truth in this country than you do for lying. In 2010, Rick Sanchez got fired from CNN for making comments about how the Jews run the media. Is he wrong? I’ve been in the entertainment industry for over twenty years. Over that time period, every meeting I’ve ever gone to had a Jewish person in the room. Why is that? Is it just the biggest string of coincidences in history? Ben Stein, Jew, once wrote an article entitled “Do Jews Run Hollywood?” His conclusion was, “You bet they do—and what of it?” If something is acceptable for a Stein to say, it should be acceptable for a Sanchez to say as well. Facts are facts regardless of the speaker. That’s what makes them facts and not opinions.

Juan Williams was another dude who got in trouble for speaking his mind about stereotypes. Juan got fired from NPR because he said he got nervous and worried when he saw Muslims board planes. Who doesn’t? Shortly after 9/11, I was taking a flight. I watched as the staff kicked a Middle Eastern dude off the plane. They didn’t ask him anything and they didn’t say anything to him. As a black man, part of me thought that was racial profiling and it wasn’t right. But another part of me had no problem with it whatsoever.

The thing is, most people are more interested in denying that stereotypes exist than actually fighting them. In the summer of 2011, the Department of Homeland Security released a public service announcement to help prevent terrorism. The terrorists in the ad belonged to every race—with one glaring exception. Old ladies? Check. Middle-aged man of unclear racial history? Yep, he’s there. Guess who was missing? Here’s a hint: Stereotypically, he should be driving a cab. Homeland Security tried so hard to not be stereotypical and racist that they ended up making clowns of themselves. It starts at the top and permeates its way down. When I was in
Chattanooga, their Most Wanted Terrorists poster was so hilarious that I just had to take a picture of it. It was full of white dudes! So Conway fucking Twitty has joined the mujahideen?

People always get worked up over shit like that, but I never do. Why get upset? We should try to avoid getting upset and laugh these things off. It’ll be easier for everybody. So much of comedy is based on people feeling uncomfortable, because
being uncomfortable forces you to think and to question your behavior
. We can’t get past racism if we can’t
laugh
about it. If you’re not comfortable laughing it off, at least mess with people about it. I’ve done it myself and the results are hysterical.

There were two times that I was out for dinner with my manager, who is white, and a similar thing happened. The first time, I ordered the Caesar salad and he got the ribs. The second time, I got the salad and he got the fried chicken. The story turned out the same way: The waiter came back and put the salad in front of the white dude, while I got the fried chicken or the ribs.

I thought it was
hilarious
. If I got offended by stuff like that, like when white people hand me their keys to bring the car around, I’d be offended
a lot
. So I decided to have fun with the waiter. “Man,” I said, “I didn’t order the fried chicken. He did.”

Apparently they had beets on special that night, because that waiter instantly turned beet red. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“Why would you put it
here
?”

He got flummoxed. “I’m … I’m … I don’t know!”

But he
did
know, and my manager knew, and I knew. The waiter just didn’t feel comfortable saying the truth that was in front of all of us. The political correctness forced him to be deceptive instead of simply being truthful. But it wasn’t like he was fooling anyone, least of all me.

All this talk of us living in a post-racial, colorblind society is nonsense, as far as I’m concerned.
Seeing
a color isn’t the same thing as
hating
a color. I heard Charles Grodin say that he knew he had come a long way with regards to race when one day he looked out and all the Knicks were black—and he hadn’t even noticed. My position is, he would have noticed if he had gone to a board meeting and all of them were black. Anyone would notice that, because people go where they belong. They go where you assign them. If I’m on a plane, I expect that the pilot is a white man. I only notice when it’s a female or a minority.

Can anyone tell me they’ve never met a person that is the very embodiment of a stereotype? Not one? For us to pretend that stereotypes are these conjured-up notions that don’t exist is dishonest and straight-up
bullshit
. I know Jews who act a certain way; I know blacks who act a certain way; I know Mexicans who act a certain way. I would say
most
of them act that way, and the exception is the one everybody holds up. What drives me crazy is when you mention a stereotype, and the person you’re speaking to brings up that one counterexample: “I’m friends with Nichelle, and she’s black. She doesn’t dance.” But that’s the
exception
, not the rule. You notice it when a white dude dances very well.
I
especially notice it because I’m a terrible dancer and I despise dancing.

There’s certain things you aren’t going to see black people do. You just won’t. You won’t see a black dude mauled by a grizzly bear in Alaska or Montana. When killer whales turn on their trainers and kill them, you know immediately that that’s not a black person. We generally get killed by drive-by shootings and the police. Who comes out ahead in the above scenarios? Which of these stereotypes is “bad”?

I can prove to everyone that stereotypes exist for a reason. I
was gigging in Baltimore in 2010 when I heard this news story: Some dude broke into a house to burglarize it. While the robber was there, he decided to kill two birds with one stone. He used the homeowner’s charger to charge his cell phone. Then he ran off with all the loot—and left his cell phone behind and got caught. Could that have been anyone other than a black dude? That’s nigger shit, right there.