When I was in high school, this Armenia kid named Nicky ran up on me one day and said, “Hey Byers! You know how you get five Black men to stop raping a white woman?”
I shrugged.
“Toss them a basketball!” he said.
“That joke is dumb,” I said after a pause. “It should have been ten Black men. That way, they could have had two teams.”
Such has always been my response to racial humor. It need only funny. When it’s not, then I’m offended.
So when I first heard that Cipha Sounds, co-host for Hot 97 in New York’s Cipha Sounds & Rosenberg Show joked that he didn’t have to worry about catching AIDS because he didn’t date Haitian women, my first thought was how many people are old enough to get that joke?
It was in the 80s, when AIDS was first emerging, that the Big Lie about AIDS being a disease only capable of spreading between homosexual men and Haitians first started to circulate.
Of course, we know now, that everybody can get AIDS.
My concern with Cipha and his stupid joke was simply that many of his morning show’s listeners are probably kids on their way to school and wouldn’t remember the first precepts about AIDS and would therefore, not understand the reference.
As for the joke itself, well…
One of the most interesting things about living in America is that nothing indicates a group’s place on the socioeconomic and psychological totem pole better than it’s ability to take a joke.
I know for a fact that the reason that I’m able to get away with writing so many hateful, racist and inflammatory things about white people is because any white man, if reading along, would dismiss me immediately as some Spook suffering from “sour grapes”.
And I admire white people for that.
I’ll also let you in on a little Newsone secret: the posts that have historically had the largest number of user comments have involved white people using the N-Word.
So get over it, my Haitians brothers and sisters. You should be madder that Cipha Sounds’ joke was corny than because he aimed it at you.
But if you need a little help to feel better, allow me to offer you this:
Ya’ll are all uptight because ya’ll got dissed on the radio by a Puerto Rican?
Wow.
RELATED:
DJ Cipha Sounds suspended for Haitian HIV comment
