Dick Gregory

2/15/2009

Tonight I went to see the Dick Gregory talk at the Hansen Student Center. I had never heard of him before seeing posters and hearing my classmates talk about the upcoming talk. He is an African American comedian and civil rights activist. In the past, he worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the civil rights movement and with civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr. He talked a lot about some serious issues, but always put a sense of humor about each topic. For example, he said that if he were president, he would dig up the rose garden and plant a watermelon patch – poking fun at the historic Black stereotype that black people enjoy watermelon. This reminded me of the movie "Ethnic Notions" that we viewed in class. I always think it's clever the way people can use historical references to create jokes. He also described how far Black society has come in that “Black History Month” used to be “Black History Week,” but the month that was chosen was February – conveniently the shortest month of the year. Everyone in the audience laughed. It was really interesting the way that he could create something funny out of a very serious topic.

I noticed a lot of difference between Gregory’s style of comedy and the mainstream White American comedy. There were times when the Black people in the audience would laugh at a joke Dick made, but not the White people. A lot of his jokes were aimed at the Black community, so the White people didn’t seem to understand the joke as the Black people did. This reminded me of the list of "Things Black People Like" versus the list of "Things White People Like." There are some things that are just cultural differences and neither group has enough exposure to the "other side" to really get the jokes.

Some touchy topics he was able to joke about included the Kobe Bryant rape scandal as well as teachers having sex with their high school students. However, there were instances that he talked about important topics but didn’t joke about them. For example, Black men make up 4% of the United States population, but account for 82% of the American deaths due to prostate cancer; and Black women account for 6% of the United States population, but account for 98% of the instances of thyroid tumors in America. The reasoning for these thyroid tumors, he explained, was because of all the hair straightening products and procedures Black women perform on their hair to get it to look less "nappy" and more like a White person's hair. This is like something that we discussed in class. Standards of beauty seem to glorify the White, blonde, thin woman. Years and years of using hair products and bleaching creams (as in China and Jamaica, he explained) in an attempt to become more "White" / beautiful, according to society's standards has actually taken a negative toll on health.

Another thing that was interesting to me was that he talked about the civil rights movement in a way that I had never thought of it before. Black men were given the right to vote before White women were. White women didn’t get their rights until the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement wasn’t just for the advancement of people of color – it helped out women’s rights, too.

Dick’s talk was an interesting experience. It was kind of interesting to be in the minority at the event (most of the audience was African American). Overall, it was a funny and also enlightening experience.