Black Comedy Project

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 11th, 2007

Elon James White and Baron Vaughn, two NYC-based comics have started The Black Comedy Project.

They’ve “reached out to comedians across the nation to finally let the world know that there’s very different voices within the community.” The community of black comics, that is.

They’ve solicited essays on the subject from comics such as Baratunde Thurston, Dave Lester, Robin Cloud and Leighann Lord.

An excerpt from Lord’s “Old School”:

I started my career with the absurdly naive notion that I just wanted to be a comic; not a Black comic, but a funny comic. I wanted to be myself with all the complexities that implies. Why only tell jokes from just one facet of my experience when I’m blessed with so many? We all are. There’s color, culture, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, education, political stance, mental and physical health, height, weight, favorite color. Is any one these influences more important, valid or defining than the other? I guess it depends on who you talk to.

A club owner/manager/booker once said to me, “Leighann you’re very funny, but can you be a little bit more black?” He wasn’t suggesting I get a tan. He was telling me he’d be more comfortable with his stereotypical image of who a black person should be, rather than who I really am. I don’t know what image of blackness he had in mind. Perhaps I should have asked him to give me an example. It would have been interesting to see what influences shaped his expert opinion. Did he watch music videos? Take a black literature or history class in college? Perhaps some of his best friends were Black.

Read the rest here.

Pretty much any time comics give other comics a chance to talk about/write about standup comedy– over and above “who stole what joke” or “all comics are crazy/lazy/desperate”– it’s a tremendous thing. It’s especially good to let standup fans, the industry and the media listen in on the dialogue.

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