A Very Awkward Comedy Night

Allow me to share with you one of the most awkward and formative nights of my life.

I went to college at UCLA.  If you’ve spent any time in LA, you know that everything from sitcoms to HBO do living tapings of shows, and need a live audience. They often give out tickets through fraternities and sororities in order to get a young, enthusiastic crowd, even providing a bus and several hundred dollars in payment if you have enough people, making it a fundraiser.  Depending on the show, it can be a fun night out.

I was living in the sorority house and one day a friend came home with tickets to an HBO Comedy Night; she had been given them by a co-worker who received them through her sorority.  We briefly wondered why her sorority got them but not ours, but figured whatever. There were five of us who decided to go; we’d dress up pretty and get there early and maybe get on TV.  All good. 

A dear friend and I in the sorority.

When we arrived, there was only one group of about six or eight people ahead of us.  Shortly after, another larger group lined up behind us.  All good.  Then the event organizers started another line, closer to the parking lot. That other line quickly grew to several hundred, a thousand, etc. It was a lovely, sophisticated crowd of, yes, good looking young people.  They also happened to ALL be black people.

One of the event organizers comes out and chatted it up with the people ahead of us.  Then he gave a nice, “Hello, Good Evening,” to our group, then chatted it up with the people behind us.

By now it was completely obvious:  this was not just an HBO Comedy Night, this was an HBO Black Comedy Night.  The tickets had been given out to black sororities.  Well, this was awkward.

We were the only white people there, and we were all very white, glowing even, and clearly the tickets were not intended for us.  We were guessing the organizers had chatted up the others near us to explain the problem of the white girls, and how they were going to manage it while still giving them the best seats they deserved. We were a problem, but they were finding a polite way to work with the situation.

We took out our tickets and examined them.  There was nothing about it being a black comedy night.  Just HBO Comedy Night.  What do we do?  We were already there, dressed up, and had nowhere else to go. Go back to the sorority house and watch TV?  Do homework? 

It’s not like black people can’t come to a supposedly white comedy night (although Jim Crow does come to mind). Should we stay or should we go? What are they going to do? Turn us away at the door? We decided to stay, as awkward as it was.

When everyone else had been let in, they came over to our line and took us in by three parties.  The first two had the exact number of seats for them saved in the center front.  Best seats in the house.  They were led in like VIPs, which at this point they were. Our little party was seated in the next-to-last row, under the balcony, in deep shadow, at the far side of the isle.  Hidden.  So the cameras couldn’t possible catch our shiny white faces. And where historically black people might have been made to sit, if not in the balcony. Even though we didn’t begrudge this, we were very aware that it might go on when a black party arrives at an overwhelmingly white event.  But in this instance it was justified, and what else would we expect? 

We scooted into our seats and I happened to be on the inside edge.  I was seated next to a very handsome man; Dang! He was good looking. He greeted me saying, “Hi, hello, nice evening, good to see you.”  He was very polite with a friendly smile, but clearly trying to hide a look of, “Whoa. Ok then.” Then he casually turned and leaned in to his friends, and pst pspsst pstt. A whole bunch of “discreet” whispering. Of course it had to be about us, the stupid white girls.  Again, perfectly appropriate to point out the elephants in the room.

So the lights went down and the show started.  The comedians were great.  Fabulous. But the awkwardness was only beginning.

A high percentage of the jokes had to do with racism, stupid white people, and The Man. Again, hilarious.  And right on the nose.  All the stupid racist things that white people say and do that we don’t even realize.  Or maybe we do.  But hilarious.  BUT, can we possibly sit there and laugh when we are the objects of the jokes? Is it appropriate?  Is it offensive?  Can we really laugh when we are the guilty ones?  Or at least irrevocably associated with the guilty ones? At obvious injustice?  But the jokes were funny and even though we were the bad guys, we couldn’t help but laugh. But I was so self-conscious and my mind was just swirling.

Even with the jokes that were not explicitly about racism, there was so much we didn’t understand.  There was slang and jargon we’d never heard before and we had no idea what it meant.  There were jokes where they would laugh and we would laugh, but we had no idea if we were laughing about the same thing.  There were jokes where they laughed uproariously, and we had no idea why.  There were cultural things we never realized or considered.

That evening at black comedy night was transformative for me.  I feel like I got the tiniest glimpse of what it must be like to be a black person in white America. 

I married a man from Oklahoma.  The first time we flew into Tulsa, something seemed off; I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Then I realized: no black people in the airport.  Not like LA. When we moved to Connecticut, same thing. I’ve read that Connecticut is the most racially segregated state in the country.  There are very much black communities and white communities, and I’ve heard way too many people express distaste or fear about venturing into those areas. It shocks me every time, although it happens infrequently.

Since that night in 1988 I have viewed myself as a white person very differently.  I am more attentive to what I say and how I say it, but my daughter corrects me because I screw up. I try to be more thoughtful. When my kids were in preschool and elementary school, I encouraged them to get to know the black kids (there were only a few).  I didn’t want my girls growing up thinking it was natural to live in an all-white world. New England is very insular.

I’m not sure how to end this except to say that the HBO night changed me.  I think about it pretty darn frequently.  I’m so glad we stayed, even though we looked like idiots. I think about my utter whiteness, as well as my interactions and friendships with black people, much more than I would have otherwise.  When I catch myself making internal racial assumptions, I try to change my thoughts and actions in real time. I frequently look at interactions with people of color through the lens of that comedy night.

So, if you are a white person and ever have tickets to a black comedy night, be prepared to see yourself in a totally new, and not necessarily flattering, light. It’s sobering. I did and I’m glad.