I haven’t seen Modern Family in a couple years, but I remember the last episode I watched. It featured a bumbling Phil Dunphy trying to hide his crush on “Angie,” one of his real estate clients. This wasn’t just any crush: Angie was totally “his type” (as they called it in one of the formal episode descriptions). Through a series of increasingly dumb and tasteless puns (“a little ~white~ lie” and “see you ~black~ home”) we learn that Phil’s type is black women.
Hilarious, right?
I certainly didn’t think so, and my initial reaction intensified as I dissected the joke. Did the writers think it was funny because it was so unlikely that Phil, an all-American (read: white) dad, would be attracted to black women? Would his attraction to Angie seem unusual, deviant, or otherwise “funny” if she weren’t black? No matter how I sliced it, the punchline was this: It’s funny because she’s black. And as a black woman with a frustrating dating life, it was the kind of joke that hit close to home, but not in a good way. This joke was on me.
While Modern Family is celebrated for its progressive storylines — and it has done a lot to normalize gay marriage — it tends to handle race in a pretty tone-deaf manner. The show’s protagonists of color — Gloria, a sassy Latina trophy wife, and Lily, a Vietnamese orphan — are characterized in ways that rely heavily (if not exclusively) on their ethnicities. The progressive ideology and post-racial humor Modern Family trades in breeds the sort of ironic, hipster racism that’s particularly prevalent among white liberals. Because they’re supposedly socially evolved, these liberals think they have a pass to make jokes at the expense of marginalized groups. In reality, their bigotry is as harmfulcoming from them as it is from anyone else.
Part of the problem with these jokes is that they’re rarely meant for the people at whose expense they’re made. Rather, these jokes signal wokeness or edginess for the joke-maker while demeaning the target of the joke. And if they’re called out, the self-righteousness with which many liberal comedians defend their right to be bigoted makes matters worse.
Take Lena Dunham, who joked that no one would think she was racist if “they knew how badly I wanted to f — Drake.” Dunham used the excuse that, at the young, innocent age of 25, she didn’t understand that saying something racist to prove she wasn’t racist probably didn’t help her case. And rather than tell her she shouldn’t say things like that because, well, they’re racist, Dunham’s white boyfriend at the time said not to say that “in public” as it wouldn’t “help” her.
Besides painting a not-so-great picture of how white people talk about race in likeminded company, this anecdote makes it clear how hipster racism is perpetuated among liberals. Since they share generally progressive attitudes, it’s easy to consider their racist humor benign — especially when there are no people of color around to offend. The same goes for jokes made about the LGBTQ community: In response to straight, liberal comedians making jokesthat rely on some level of homophobia, Keep It podcast co-host Louis Vitrel said the following (skip to 9:45 for the quote):
When something is funny, you have to ask “to whom?” and “why?” And in this case, it feels like jokes you make because you don’t think gay people are in the room. You don’t care if they hear, and you’re making a crass attempt at edginess and not caring why the joke is actually funny, when it’s actually just alienating people.
As the Modern Family gag unfolded, it became clear that the questions of “to whom” and “why” it was funny didn’t occur or matter to the writers. It’s hard to imagine a joke like that airing if there were a single black woman — or any woman of color, really — in the writer’s room. And chances are there weren’t; in 2016, Variety reported that 80 percent of TV showrunners on the five broadcast networks were male, and 90 percent were white.
All of this isn’t to say that white people can’t ever make jokes about people of color, or that men can’t ever make jokes about women. But it is to say that it’s important — and if nothing else, kind — to recognize when a joke is punching down, or perpetuating a negative stereotype that does real harm to an already disadvantaged group. And harmfulness aside, jokes that punch down really aren’t that funny (or rather, they aren’t funny to people with souls). If truth is the foundation of humor, then who better to make that joke than someone who best knows their truth?
Below you’ll find a few women of color who share their (very funny) truths with the world.
— Ari, a black woman who needs to learn how to take a joke, am I right?!
JESSICA GAO
Jessica Gao is a comedy writer on shows like Corporate, Rick and Morty, and Silicon Valley. When she’s not doing that, she hosts a podcast with Dan Harmon called Whiting Wongs; there, they talk about TV writing and racism in Hollywood. Follow her on Twitter here.
APARNA NANCHERLA
If you haven’t heard of Aparna Nancherla, you’ve probably heard her as Hollyhock in BoJack Horseman, seen her in Corporate (that show has a diverse team) or watched Master of None, which she wrote for and guest starred in. Last month she was featured on the Netflix series The Standups, and she is truly one of the funniest people on Twitter.
STEFANI ROBINSON
Stefani Robinson is a writer/producer on Atlanta, the best show you’re not watching (if you are, you’re not watching it enough). In the long year between Atlanta’s first and second seasons, Robinson also joined the writing staff for (the since-cancelled) Man Seeking Woman. We’re looking forward to seeing what she does next.
Token is a project by Ari Curtis and Natalie Chang that celebrates the work and worth of women of color. Subscribe here to get the latest issues in your inbox.
