Black Friday Baby, Part One

Or Better Late Than Never, Part Two: Part One!

I can’t stand it, Y’all. I can’t stand the way children are not people, but objects to acquire and then mock. Because children never grow up and watch Daddy’s stand-up routine…and if they do, they’ll keep their mouths shut unless they’re pretending to laugh, because this is Daddy, and Daddy couldn’t really mean all the things he said, could he?

Of course he could. Just ask Pastor Boob Job Baby how side-splittingly funny it is to bring a different-race child into your white white white family. No, really, it’s a riot! Suffering? Racism? Shut up. Know what you are if you think racism exists? A RACIST THAT’S WHAT.

[deep breath] Sorry, it’s been awhile. I get worked up easier than I used to. I’m also pissed off because I can’t find a transcript of the below, which means I’m gonna have to watch it over…and over…and over again in order to do it justice. Mercifully, it’s short. It’s a clip from a side-splitting standup comedy routine entitled “Black Friday Baby.”

SO. This funny man got married, wanted a family, couldn’t make a baby, and purchased one from Kenya. Sorry, “brought home [his] very own baby” from Kenya.

(Very own? Of course it’s their very own. They have the receipt!*)

“And folks,” adds Mister Funnyman, quite emphatically, “We could not. Be. Happier!” A new dad always has to say that, doesn’t he? When you get a child that’s really Your Very Own, nobody just ASSUMES you’re happy your wife gave birth, do they? Hell no! You have to make it. Very. Clear. How. HAPPY! YOU!! ARE!!!

Of course you don’t. The only reason Funnyman Dad here says this is because he knows it is assumed by others, including his audience, that he can’t be happy with this inferior Kenyan replacement baby. Naturally, to prove how not-racist they are and how great adoption is, the audience goes wild. Woo! Yeah! What a wonderful man you are, Sir, to stoop to taking in that black African…no, wait, we don’t believe that at all. Why are we acting like we believe that?

Funny, Funny Daddy goes on to say how thrilled he is that his wife “gets to be a mommy” and that he will have a token Negro in his family for basketball jokes. No, he doesn’t say he’s glad he gets to be a daddy. He says he’s glad to have a family member who “can dunk.”

“Can dunk.”

“Can. Dunk.”

“Can dunk” means “is black,” because everyone ever born with a certain amount of melanin in his or her skin not only can, but wants to, play really good basketball. Isn’t it amazing how not-racist this man is? And funny!

After a pause to say again how happy he is with his precious black baby and how he doesn’t at all whip it for not picking enough cotton, Daddy spoils the secret for us by mentioning that he’s from Virginia. Whaat?! A man with that accent and that black baby is a white Southerner? But if he were a white Southerner, he would already have lynched this baby! That’s what white Southerners do. ALL OF THEM. Except for this one guy who is So Special he finds it acceptable to, apparently, start an entire family just to prove how racist he ain’t. Sheeeit.

I kept waiting for him to say “Now, Y’all know we could totally have got us a white one.  I mean, they wuz ovair in Keenya just thowin white babies at us. But we dodged’em, because we are Very Good People, not like the racists we expect our baby to deal with all her life.” Yes, those racists: The ones in Virginia, the ones she would never have encountered at all if it weren’t for you and your wife’s perfect white love.

ANYWAY these white people in Virginny, unlike white people anywhere else, sometimes “ask  stupid questions” when they see a white man in close proximity to a black baby. You see, all the racism in the world has been concentrated in Virginia and other Southern US states. This is why black people outside of the Southern US never have trouble with cops unless they have committed a crime, never have trouble exercising their right to vote, and, as a group, have the same amount of property, money and political power white people do.

Bullshit, Sir. The only reason you were able to purchase an African baby is that they are seen as less valuable than white ones, and you know it. The system is racist. You are racist. I am racist. If we can’t admit that, nothing will ever change. But you got the baby your wife wanted and you’re making money on this, so maybe you don’t care.

Let’s get back to stupid questions.

Funny Daddy insists a white person asked him how his baby could distinguish him from other white men. You know, the way white racists can’t tell one black man from another! I have lived my half-century-plus life in the South, and I have never heard anyone ask this question or any question like it. I cannot imagine anyone asking this question. In order to ask this question, a racist would have to assume black people act and think the way s/he does because black people are as human as s/he is, which is not traditionally how racists think. It’s a bit too self-aware–obviously so. And that’s why I suspect Daddy made it up. For laughs.

If I were his daughter, I wouldn’t find this funny at all, because Daddy, I’m not a lion and I’m sick of representing the entire continent of Africa to you and everybody else, Daddy. I’m tired.

(She’s also tired because he made his Lion King joke too way long. I hope Seth McFarlane fries in Hell.)

Then Funny Daddy points out that it’s 2017 and people still say dumb things can ya believe it!? It’s not like we put a dangerous  racist maniac in charge of our country ten minutes ago. It’s just dumb people saying dumb things, and Daddy has fun with them, because they can’t hurt Daddy. They can only make Daddy look good and get Daddy paid. (I sure hope Daddy never did a routine about how bullshit white privilege is.) But it gets worse.

It gets worse when Funny Daddy says he snaps back at people who say dumb things because they make him “feel inappropriate.”

They make his white Virginia ass. Feel inappropriate. In Virginia.

Sir, nobody can make YOU feel inappropriate in Virginia without your consent. Your child, OTOH, will always not only feel but BE inappropriate. No matter how much you yourself (o thou white angel!) do to spread the gospel of anti-racism, which you are not doing, you will never be able to keep her safe. Especially not as long as you try to do so by laughing at the predicament you put her in. I don’t think that’s funny at all, and I find it very scary that you do.

The second dumb question Funnyman Daddy says he was asked is  “When’d’ja get’er?” This question is not “dumb.” It isn’t even offensive. It’s mere curiosity. It’s nosiness, which is rude at worst. It’s only “offensive” because a supposed Wal-Mart security guard supposedly said it, supposedly while patting his gun at white Funnyman Daddy.

Funny Daddy wants us to believe his black baby turned him black and therefore made him vulnerable to police violence. This is, of course, pure bullshit. White people who adopt black babies, while they are certainly inconvenienced and may experience racial discrimination, do not become black and do not lose their white privilege.

And that is really all of this mess I can deal with in one blog post. Stay tuned for Part Two.

 

*The lovely hair that Galla wears/Is hers–who could have thought it?/She swears ’tis hers; and true she swears/For I know where she bought it! — Martial.