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Language and Racism.
A peculiar feature of the truth is that it’s funny. Actually, wait. The truth is clearly not always funny. What I mean is that there’s a certain joy that reliably accompanies the truth. And that this joy will, under the right circumstances, make people laugh. Great comedians all understand this. The Richard Pryors, the George Carlins, the Dave Chappelles. All of them are (or were) masters of utilising this hidden feature of the truth.
It’s why Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix special 8:46 was so powerful. It’s why Richard Pryor was (and still is) so revered for standing on stage and telling us, often with excruciating honesty, how imperfect he was. It’s why George Carlin’s commentary on language and politics is still as valuable and relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Take this clip from his 1990 special “Doin’ It Again” for example:
I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic language, and American English is loaded with euphemisms. ’Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth. So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation…I’ll give you an example of that.
