I got into Black comedy before any other kind of stand up. Many of my favorite comedy films feature a mix of Midwest and Black cultures. Smart observational humor is great for me but I appreciate the silly stuff too. Those on this list seem to be well rounded individuals and I gravitate to those types of people.
Too much comedy is based on race, weight, and slamming down the disadvantaged. You really don’t get that one-track-mindedness from Black comedy. You definitely get some typical American racism and sexism in there but there’s a lot less of it with Midwest comedians. So this is a strong list, and healthy. If you are a decent person, driven, smart, interested, fun, and can take some ribbing, you will love this group of comics.
Of course many will, as usual, lie or believe the delusion that I’m culturally appropriating by wearing a dashiki in the video. That’ll be the excuse to further misrepresent, attack, and/or ignore me. Or they’ll say I’m wearing a costume. Whitesplaining – as a fallback. Of course, I’m used to dealing with their racism and I’ve been consciously wearing mixes of styles from various cultures from around world since I was a teenager. I recognized how much I enjoyed pulling together fashion from my different interests, combining patterns, colors, layering clothes that fit different.
I’m learning more with each passing day how uncultured and unfashionable almost all Americans are. They don’t take chances or know how to rock different pieces of clothing from various ethnic groups or regions without playing some kind of sarcastic insulting character alongside it. I use this example all the time and it seems to help some uneducated indoctrinated people. Jeans are Italian in origin and polos British. Moccasins are Native and silk shirts are Chinese. My Hanes white tees were made in Dominican Republic. None of these items of clothing are good ole racist colorwheel exceptionalist American.
Juneteenth is an important day for many American people and I hope that, maybe, if it doesn’t interest you to listen to some dry take on American history on the History channel from a pretentious entitled Brit or coastal American, that you can take some time to laugh with these genius comedic artists of native African ancestry.
