Following a highly rated Super Bowl Sunday, late night host Jay Leno seemed to be grasping for straws to keep his studio audience laughing the following night. “The Saints are famous for chanting ‘Who Dat,'” Leno said, building to the punch line. “See, I thought that was one of the names of Saddam Hussein’s kids… Remember ‘Who Dat’ and his brother ‘Who Dey?'”
While most viewers could recognize the reference to the executed Iraqi president and his two murdered sons, few likely took offense to Leno’s mocking the phonetics of the foreign-sounding names, pronounced Uday and Qusay. But, for those from countries outside of the United States, a seemingly harmless joke like this could be considered culturally and racially insensitive.
Though Leno is not by any means the only comedian with morally questionable dialogue, his example raises a question about boundaries in comedy and, furthermore, if racist jokes should be allowed for the sake of a laugh.
Even narrower of a social question is whether or not making a racial joke can be considered a form of racism and, if so, what can be said for comedians who mock stereotypes of their own backgrounds. BBC News searched for answers to the same questions, following British Parliament member Ann Winterton’s controversial joke about throwing a Pakistani man through a window. When asked if racial gags are simply a more “acceptable” means of being racist, comedian Bernard Manning insisted that those in the business have to “tell jokes about everything and everyone” and that the public should “never take it seriously.”
Despite the claim that “everything and everyone” can be the subject of a punch line, many comedians have made their careers solely out of playing on racial stereotypes. And while it may not be blatant to the casual viewer, especially when the comic in question is a minority mocking his or her own background, paying closer attention to some of the jokes can reveal the common theme within the humor.
Comedians like Chris Rock, who joked in 2008 that Michelle Obama could not be First Lady because she would want “KiKi to be Secretary of the State,” and Sacha Baron Cohen, popular for his outrageously foreign alter-egos, have found success in poking at the public perception of minorities, for better or for worse.
Considering that Rock is a black comedian famous for parodying black culture, there appears to be an unspoken rule that even a joke ostensibly racist on paper can be spoken by a comic of that race without being considered “racist.” And that seems to be the case with many black, Latino, and, recently, Muslim comedians. While this may be a double-standard, it can also be beneficial in bridging the multi-cultural divide, according to Muslim comedian Azhar Usman.
Touring with the alternative comedy show “Allah Made Me Funny,” Usman pokes fun at his own culture and finds that highlighting stereotypes can serve as an educational function. “Just as Muslims feel that Islam is greatly misunderstood in America, so too is America misunderstood in the Muslim world,” Usman says, playfully adding, “I think [the show] is ready to explode into the Muslim world, no pun intended.”
Are the same jokes about Muslim culture made by Usman inappropriate when said by a white man like Jay Leno? Perhaps it is in the comedian’s delivery rather than the actual words that determine that answer. As Indian-Canadian comic Russell Peters believes, there is a clear distinction between racist and racial jokes. “Racist is, ‘I hate you for being you.’ Racial is, ‘I’m talking about different races and taking about them from an educated, respectful point of view,” he explains. White, black, Latino, or Muslim, comedians may want to weigh the purpose that these racial jokes serve with how potentially harmful their words can be, before reaching a punch line that isn’t all that funny.
