My best class of the semester has been Black Humor: Literature, Art and Performance, taught by Glenda Carpio. (I previously referenced the course in the post What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Abe Lincoln). Carpio is a great teacher at a university where many profs care more about publishing and schmoozing that instructing, and you can’t beat a syllabus that features generous doses of Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and The Boondocks.
This week the class sat down to analyze a skit I’ve probably seen 50 times over the last few years: “The Racial Draft” from the second season of Chappelle’s Show. (My apologies for the bad sound/image sync on the YouTube clip). The premise is a typical Chappelle comedy land mine: with so many people claiming multiple racial identities, we need an NFL-style racial draft so each race can snag its own stars and end the arguments once and for all. One by one, representatives of the blacks, whites, Jews, Latinos and Asians step to the podium and draft their newly exclusive members as a trio of announcers (including Chappelle) offers, uh, color commentary.
Funny stuff, and, it seems, fraught with social commentary. We studied the Racial Draft in tandem with Paul Beatty’s novel The White Boy Shuffle, a rudely funny but tender riff on the commodification of multiculturalism – a theme that also dominates The Racial Draft. To wit:
The Racial Draft depicts multiculturalism as a sort of mass marketplace, where athletes, pop singers and political figures can be swapped on the open market. For instance, the whites (represented by Chappelle in pancake make-up) claim Colin Powell, America’s most mainstream black political star until the rise of Obama (who would doubtless be a hot commodity in a 2008 Racial Draft). But the blacks, led by Mos Def’s hustler figure, agree to the deal only if the whites also take Condoleezza Rice. The blacks respond by demanding Eminem. No go, respond the whites, but you can take OJ Simpson. Wonder if they all get sneaker deals.
Tiger Woods (Chappelle again) is taken with the first pick by the blacks. Chappelle’s Woods is a cuddly goof with an overbite. In the booth, Chappelle remarks that it’s good Woods likes being 100 percent black – because he just lost all of his endorsements. In other words, the golf legend’s biracialism isn’t a problem – on the contrary, it’s a marketing bonanza, a reminder that we often like our black stars to be as un-black, and as safe, as possible.
Kitsch and faddery dominate the proceedings. The announcers wonder if the Jews might take Madonna, to finish off what the Kabbala started. (They take Lenny Kravitz instead). The Asians claim the Wu-Tang Clan, who came to Asian culture by way of kung fu flicks. In the Racial Draft race and ethnicity are little more than commercial symbols and flavors of the month, to be claimed on a whim or a lark.
As the GZA says at the draft’s conclusion, konichiwa bitches.
blognarian 