WARNING: May be offensive to some, but search for many reaction videos, showing insider laughter
‘Nothing’s wrong if it’s funny’: Black comedy taps a longstanding coping tool
Sarcasm, trading insults, in-jokes continue a tradition that began when the first enslaved Africans were forcibly brought here to work against their will in 1619, two years before the first alleged Thanksgiving.
- [It is more likely Blacks were here, part of the Indigenous people on the mainland and surrounding islands, not brought en masse in an Atlantic slave trade but worse -- lied to about their alien and outsider status, dispossessed of African roots and denied knowledge of their American roots.]
Many Black Americans believe they can laugh at anything.
Rod and Karen Morrow, of “The Black Guy Who Tips” podcast, stand by this statement.
They’re a comedic duo and married couple, and their show’s motto is, “Nothing’s wrong if it’s funny.”
“If you’ve been around enough Black people, you’d know they joke when people die, they joke when babies are born, they joke at funerals … And a lot of these things are very sensitive topics, but we just have found a way to take our pain and make it humorous,” Karen Morrow said.
The Morrows carry this tradition of Black humor into their podcast, joking about everything from coronavirus to police brutality.
“Someone being harassed by the police is sad. But if we also decide that the absurdity of racism and the irony is funny, then it is also funny. And our show is a lot of that,” Rod Morrow said.
Finding humor in fraught topics isn’t anything new for Black Americans. It’s a method of coping that stems back to 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to U.S. shores.
Corliss Outley is a professor at Clemson University and co-author of the 2020 paper, “Laughing While Black: Resistance, Coping and the Use of Humor as a Pandemic Pastime among Blacks.” More
- Karen Morrow of The Black Guy Who Tips podcast. (Image courtesy of Karen and Rod Morrow)
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