How to Make White People Laugh

by Negin Farsad

  That isn’t the only time this kind of thing happened to me. I learned after my first year of stand-up that I didn’t quite have an obvious audience for my material. Some comedians have a clear audience; they can say, “Gay men love my act,” or “Suburban moms really identify with my kid material,” or “Broadway stagehands love my prop comedy.” I didn’t know who my audience was. I had been doing stand-up in New York to fun, generally progressive crowds. But then I had one of my first paying gigs out of town, in Chicago. I was so excited! I was getting paid, bitches! I was professionalizing! I arrived at Northwestern University in Chicago, marched onto the stage with pizzazz and a zest for life, and spoke for twenty solid minutes… to crickets.

  What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was an Iranian audience—no white person to be found. It was a mix of immigrants, like my parents, and college-aged Iranian students. The Middle Eastern student group that brought me out decided to invite Iranians in the larger community. Those Iranians were parents and uncles and general elders to the younger students. It seemed that because of their aunties’ presence, the students didn’t feel comfortable laughing at any of my dating material. Laughing would be tantamount to admitting they’ve ever had sex!

  As audience members filed out, one woman told another woman, within earshot, that I was a whore. Everyone else left silently, avoiding eye contact. The producer of the show looked at me like I had killed a hamster.

  So… that didn’t go well. But it was only the beginning, because as my stand-up started popping up on YouTube I started getting comments like “Suck my proud Persian cock, you fucking whore” among other memorable zingers. Evidentially, the Internet isn’t just for buying embarrassing products in bulk—like toilet paper and off-season supplies of Cadbury Mini Eggs—but it’s also where people go to let off some bigoted and/or misogynistic steam.

  I learned a lot about tailoring my material to different audiences, and I also learned not to read YouTube comments because they’re generally violent, and it can’t sit well with your soul. But I also learned that people like me have to break through, that we can’t censor ourselves. Self-censoring doesn’t help. I can’t pretend like I don’t date or that I’ve never had sex. Sure, I can avoid cursing—like I would on network television or when volunteering with young children—but I can’t fundamentally deny my own life.

  I’ve done comedy everywhere—the South, the Midwest, big cities, small towns—and I’ve performed for white audiences, mixed audiences, and Muslim audiences. I’m not saying I’ve never heard racist shit come out of white audiences (and I’ll talk about that later). But I am saying that I’ve received some of the most heartbreaking resistance to my comedy from my own people.

  You might think that your abuela is totally cool with your stance on gay rights or your farm-to-table cooking practices. You might think your Lebanese parents will understand your need to cross-dress or cross-stitch or whatever it is that helps you express your you-ness. You might think that your Muslim brothers and sisters want to hear you on that stage—that they will have your back—that they’ll be the last people to walk out on you. But that might not be the case. Or it might be. People are complicated. But I do know you can’t assume support just because you share a background. You’re a Third Thing. It’s different.

  After every instance of my own people not liking me very much—the folks that call me a whore, the hate mail, the death threats, the walkouts—I pick myself up, dust myself off, and reapply some moisturizer. I use comedy to get through social interactions. I act like a tough motherfucker. But inside I’m tore up. I feel like this Lego version of Optimus Prime, let’s say, I have these huge, powerful arms and they seem indestructible. Someone hurls an insult that dislodges my arm, and it just falls to the ground. Because those parts are destructible. They’re just Legos. The pieces are still there, scattered on the ground and after one good cry, a strongly worded tweet, and a couple of bouts of self-doubt, I take those Legos and I start building that tough motherfucker up again. If I don’t get back up, the Decepticons will win—and those guys are total dicks.

  It just goes to show that it ain’t easy being (a) green and (b) a Third Thing hyphenated American. So when you go out there to make white people laugh, don’t expect your own people to follow you. It’s possible they won’t even like you very much. But that’s okay, your stuff isn’t for them. Forget comedy—when you strike out on your own to set your career in motion, to date, to sing karaoke, to wear leggings, you can’t assume that your friends and family will just be okay with it all. You’ll launch an app, you’ll write songs, you’ll design logos, you’ll draft buildings, and use algorithms, and there’s no telling what you can do—and whatever route you take, you may have inexplicable opposition from your own people. But again, your life isn’t for them. Let them come around.

  CHAPTER 10

  A Taxonomy of Haters

  If you’ve never traveled the great expanse of the United States, you’re missing out. As a comic, I’ve been to a lot of places. I’ve driven a lot of cars, and I’ve sat in and/or napped in even more cars. I have seen multilane freeways, single-lane roadways, interstates, service roads, and off-ramps. I’ve driven on porous asphalt, reinforced concrete tarmac, and gravel. I’ve been fooled too many times by mini speed bumps—the kind that make you think you have a flat tire. Then you’re like Oh no, I don’t have a flat, I’m just on one of those roads with the mini speed bumps, what are those things called? Am I making up the term mini speed bump, or am I some kind of transportation expert whose command of freeway jargon comes naturally? These are the kinds of thoughts I’d have in, let’s say, the roads of eastern Kentucky. Nice place, great walleye fishing.

  Oh, and America, she is a beaut! Woody Guthrie was right—you’ll see anything from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters; you’ll also see Waffle Houses, abandoned malls, office parks, and shooting ranges with a smattering of diabetes, anorexia, and credit card debt. Driving in the South is particularly fascinating, because you see swampland (and Waffle Houses). On the Muslims Are Coming! tour we saw a huge Confederate flag somewhere in Georgia billowing in the wind (near a Waffle House). We obviously needed to stop and add this to our photostream, because in Manhattan, it is not every day that you see a colossal Confederate flag set in a perfectly manicured field of grass. Talk about majesty. Though, actually, seeing that flag is rather commonplace for some parts of the South, not all parts. We stopped to roll the cameras. It was like taking a picture of racism, expressed in old-timey graphic design. That was when a gentleman came out to ask us what we were doing. He had the mien of someone who knew how to build a deck with his bare hands while reciting Faulkner. He inspired a certain kind of genteel masculine fear.

  We exchanged the usual pleasantries that a band of comedians would exchange with the proprietor of a significant parcel of land showcasing a Confederate flag. We explained that we hadn’t really seen a Confederate flag of such breadth before, and that we really wanted to get some footage of it. Now, when you’re a bunch of brown comedians—with a film crew of two white dudes and a Latino guy—you may or may not stick out in the Deep South. We would regularly put Blair and Torey—the cinematographer and second camera operator—ahead of us to create a calming effect on passersby in these iffy situations. But here we were scattered among the errant livestock that grazed around the flag.

  We expected some kind of “Get off my (supersized) lawn!” response, but the man was actually pleased that we were shooting footage. However, he wanted us to know one thing: “This isn’t a Confederate flag, it’s a flag from the collection of eleven states just after the Colonial era.” Er, say what? You mean, the eleven states that comprised the Confederacy? Because what you’re saying sounds like what we’re saying, only not at all.

  THE CONFEDERATE FLAG AND GEORGIA

  This was Georgia’s state flag from 1956 to 2001, a flag with the Confederate flag tucked inside it. The beauty of this flag is that you essentially got two flags i
n one. The grotesqueness of this flag is the whole “symbol of racism” thing. Note this flag lasted until 2001! There was already Internet, we already tried and tested the Grunge era, parachute pants came and went, my mother had an AOL account, we developed truly nonstick pans, everyone had microwaves, the Olympics games were held in Atlanta for an international audience… and through it all, through it all, this was the state flag of Georgia. I mean, 2001!??!

  We responded with scattered: “Oh, really? Oh, okay, yeah, totally cool, sweet, yeah, cool, cool, got it, cool…” We finished filming, hopped in the car and immediately Googled “Confederate flag” on every device available until we found out that, yes! This was a Confederate flag! Not “a flag from the collection of eleven states just after the colonial era”—that’s way too wordy for a flag! Even a flag from the nineteenth century! Those people had some verbal flourish, but “a flag from the collection of eleven states just after the Colonial era” is like multisyllabic mouth rape.

  NO, SERIOUSLY, THAT CONFEDERATE FLAG JUST WON’T QUIT

  Oh, my previous sidebar makes it sound like Georgia was the only case of head-scratching Confederate flag commitment. For any of you who lived through 2015, you’ll recall a particularly horrific mass shooting of black parishioners during a Bible study at a historically black church in South Carolina. The shooter had posted photos of himself with a Confederate flag, a website with white supremacist ideology, and other upsetting fare. Then everyone suddenly remembered that the Confederate flag was indeed flying over the state capitol of South Carolina. For a week, politicians of every stripe, including South Carolina’s own governor, decried the flag, wanted it taken off public grounds. It even trended on Twitter, so you know it was important. But after all of that—the appalling shooting, the endless rhetoric, the nonstop pundits—a CNN poll showed that 57 percent of Americans don’t think the flag is a sign of racism. Among Southern whites alone, 75 percent of them don’t think it’s a sign of racism. Whereas 75 percent of Southern African Americans do see it as a sign of racism. So basically, most white people think the flag is like, meh, no big deal, it’s a sign of Southern pride, what’s the problem? That is probably a problem. Nevertheless, after the national hemming and hawing, both houses of the South Carolina legislature voted to take it down. The governor scheduled the removal for a couple of days later, when the flag would be moved to a museum that probably has a great “hateful things collection.” The removal of the flag was, in a word, ceremonial. Or in three words: Cer. E. Monial. Several honor guards in white gloves gingerly handled the flag, making sure that the symbol of racism and bigotry wouldn’t get smudged. The flag might have represented a shameful chapter in the nation’s history of slavery, but let’s make sure none of the fabric runs. On a totally unrelated note, there was no effort made on the issue of gun control. Because the parishioners were shot with flags.

  (You can find the stats here: Jennifer Agiesta, “Poll: Majority Sees Confederate Flag as Southern Pride Symbol, Not Racist,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/politics/confederate-flag-poll-racism-southern-pride/.)

  What’s strange is that he didn’t want us to perceive him as a guy who would have a Confederate flag. He wanted us to think of him as some kind of erudite historian, keeping civilization alive. But why would you want to keep this bit of civilization alive in such a majestic way? I mean, you dedicated an entire field to this flag and the sixty-foot flagpole looks freshly polished. I can understand finding something positive about the region’s cultural history from that era and championing that—mint juleps, say, make a big old flag commemorating the fine Southern tradition of mint juleps. But the Confederate flag is so wrought with slavery, legal slavery. Legal slavery that was the underpinning of our nation’s Civil War. Which is to say, we almost didn’t have a unified country because this one region wanted slavery so bad! What I’m trying to say here is, there are better flags out there.

  This little interaction illustrated the extent to which haters live on a spectrum. Hate’s bizarre twin, Love, is also on a spectrum that goes from “What a thoughtful text message” to “He’s stalking me and I’m so scared.” So it stands to reason that Hate would have its strange little dimensions and nuances. I have gathered here a taxonomy to explain some of the species in the genus Hate.

  NO REALLY, THE FLAG IS STILL HANGING ON

  Oh, my previous two sidebars makes it sound like Georgia and South Carolina were the only cases of head-scratching Confederate flag commitment. Turns out, the Confederate flag is also a part of the Mississippi state flag. They have no plans to remove it.

  FUN FACT: MUSLIMS USED TO BE SLAVES, TOO!

  That’s right: Just when you thought there was no overlapping theme, just when you thought I really couldn’t create that black-Muslim connection that I so yearned for in college, I hit you up with this fun historical fact: some of the early slaves were big ol’ Muzzies. Yes, in 1528 a Moroccan Muslim dude named Estevanico ended up in Texas with some Spanish explorers. Did they capture him? Yes! Did they give him a Christian name? You betcha! He ended up escaping captivity and exploring the future southwestern United States. There were other solo guys like this one, but more notably anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of African slaves were Muslim. They were all routinely converted to Christianity, but they got their start in Islam. So in a way, we’re just as much a Muslim nation as we are a Christian nation, which is as much as we are a Buddhist nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Zoroastrian nation… because we’re not supposed to be an anything nation! There’s separation of church and state. (Or at least there should be, amiright? Who’s with me!?)

  Swing Haters

  The Confederate flag owner above struck me as a “Swing Hater.” The Swing Hater is sister to the swing voter, but way worse. If you look at swing voters, they aren’t registered Democrats or Republicans. They’re usually not black—being black makes you a likely Democrat. And they’re usually not Southern evangelicals, because they are usually GOP voters.1 Above all, they just can’t decide! They’re ideological sluts willing to be persuaded from one camp to another. They’re totally noncommittal—like the men I’ve dated—they might call you, they might not call you, it’s any pundit’s (or suffering woman’s) guess.

  Like the swing voter in electorally coveted states like Ohio and hanging-chad Florida—the swing hater is on the fence about whether to hate. They can be convinced to hate or not to hate. The swing hater is where I think we can win some big votes. Because this flag man, he really didn’t seem to mind that a bunch of minorities were on his property. If we had invited him out to a cup of coffee, he probably would have accepted. He likes people. But he was raised with this flag, and frankly, given the geography of where we found him, he wasn’t around much diversity. He had a huge blind spot about what the flag meant to nonwhite, non-Southern people. Once that blind spot gets filled with information and exposure, the swing hater turns into a swing lover. (Oh wait, “swing lover” has a totally different connotation, but you know what I’m getting at.)

  This kind of thinking rests on the notion that people can change their minds. There are those of you who don’t think that’s possible—I’m looking at you, Curmudgeon McSourpuss. If you think that attitude change isn’t possible, then how can you explain gay marriage? The statistics on gay marriage have changed so dramatically that you would think Bill O’Reilly has come out of the closet with his lover Glenn Beck, and they’re going to ride into the sunset together (right after Glenn draws little hearts on his chalkboard). In 2001, 57 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage, 35 percent supported it, and I suspect that that undisclosed 8 percent were picking their noses and the surveyor didn’t want to talk to them.2 By the time of this writing, 55 percent supported gay marriage and 39 percent opposed it. That’s what social scientists call “flipping shit around.” That’s not just because marriage deniers have died off. Oh no, even when you break down the statistic by age group you find that baby boomers, for example, went from 32 percent supporting gay marriage to 45 p
ercent supporting gay marriage. That’s because people change their minds.

  Evangelicals have gone through the most stunning change on this score. These were the same people who always used the joke that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve (that felt old even when it was new, if you know what I mean). These were the fire and brimstone people. It seemed like they would never change. And yet, one report shows that their support of gay marriage went from 20 percent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2014.3 Can you believe it? The evangelicals! E. Van. Gelicals!

  The human brain is a big fat neuroplastic video game with thingamajigs sending boops and beeps to whosamacallits along various different delivery routes. Those boops sometimes become beeps, and beeps sometimes morph into boops, and right turns become left, and left turns decide to go straight, because the brain was designed to change. What I’m saying is, I’m a neuroscientist and this paragraph is tantamount to going to medical school.4

  FORGOTTEN OBJECTS OF HATE THROUGH HISTORY

  Haters gonna hate but sometimes they neglect people, places, or things worthy of a real fist curl. This is a list that hasn’t gotten enough attention in the Annals of Official Hate. They are the B-sides to history’s more obviously vile subjects, like Hitler.