A Def Jam comedian once offered a summary of the difference between whites' and blacks' worldviews. I don't understand white folks, he said. They get depressed. So they spend $5,000 on a psychiatrist. A black man got $5,000? He ain't depressed. Whites think criminals are disproportionately black; blacks think neurotics are disproportionately white. Blacks routinely dismiss suicide, incest, sexual fetishes and any freaky, taboo behavior in general as afflicting only whites. These beliefs extend to the ridiculous. As a hairdresser worked on me once, I asked her about head lice, and she cut me off saying that only whites got them. They don't live in our hair. The next day a doctor confirmed my suspicions: I'd had head lice even as the hairdresser worked on me, but her racism blinded her to the little squigglers.

Suicide rates are climbing in the black community, especially among young men, but we refuse to see that either. Sexual abuse and depression debilitate millions of black women but we deny that, too. Poor mental health abounds in the black community, but it's a silent agony. It can't be acknowledged because that's weak and that's white. I'm not white, some harried black woman will quip, I can't afford a nervous breakdown. So we come home from a day in a hairnet and spank our children mercilessly for minor infractions. I'm never sure if it's better or worse that it's almost all inwardly directed.

Even black artistic expression reflects that limited sense of entitlement. I've been so struck by the self-contained worldview of black comedians that I once categorized most of a TV season's-worth of their jokes. Of 45 Def Jam-type comics (extremely popular with the black working and poverty class), exactly one made reference to the world outside of the black community (she made rather sophisticated fun of Jesse Helms and the Republicans). The Clintons' bimbo problems, the two-party system, the economy, war, the collapse of Communism? Nothing. Except for ruminating endlessly about the differences between blacks and whites (and in these jokes, too, whites often came out ahead), it was all about the 'hood. Popular black movies tend to be the same. They're simplistic takes on white racism, drug dealer melodramas or How to be a Player While Making a Booty Call. It's as if the totality of the American reality is off-limits to blacks.

In their own minds, the deranged Littleton killers saw themselves as glorious heroes, something most blacks are still a long way from daring to imagine. Hollywood helps reinforce this exclusion. Virtually no black soldiers were depicted in "Saving Private Ryan," for instance. Spielberg said he chose his soldiers to closely resemble the immigrants of that era, thus automatically excluding blacks though many, like my father, served. It may be that few blacks actually served in the units he depicted, but neither did Tom Hanks. It's all about who gets to portray real Americans.

In comedy, as in killing, for black folks it's still about one powerless individual adrift in a cruel world doing what he has to in order to hold on to his few crumbs and look good doing it. It was inside out for the unhappy white boys Eric and Dylan -- they demanded acknowledgement. When societal change made them feel powerless and impotent (in other words, black), they snapped. Unhappy black boys kill for a pair of sneakers. Unhappy white boys kill to be noticed. What's the difference, really?
salon.com | May 4, 1999

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