I feel like this comes from a really bad place, and I don’t respect it. [I’m not calling anyone at CHTV a racist; what I’m saying is that they know not what they mock, and are doing it in poor form.] Gangsta rap is so easy to make fun of - just look at how funny they are with their guns and rolled-up pant-legs, their ridiculous ‘bling’ and anti-white talk! - and yet, the gang at CollegeHumor manages to screw it up so badly…and with so little charm. It is a caricature of a caricature of black culture from 1991.
This is no Lazy Sunday, which worked so well because Magnolia cupcakes and nerd-movies would’ve been so foreign to someone like Eazy-E and, yet, Parnell and Samberg rapped it with the same conviction as the LAX-con. This, however, is a two-minute refresher course in blackface, with stereotypes presented as jokes. There’s no nuance here. No thought, either. It is, in essence, a LOOKIT THE BLACK MAN DANCE FOR US video.
And, to get my Scratch cap on, the rhymes are completely boilerplate, and the beat is straight outta ATL circa 2005.
I agree with what Jeff says, and while it’s easy to dismiss this sort of race-based criticism as people being oversensitive or taking a joke too sensitively, that also seems like a really easy cop out that’s meant to justify some shortsighted thinking.
I don’t think anyone’s accusing CHTV of bringing back Black face or whatever, but moreso that there was probably a way to execute something like this without having to make a play on these stereotypes that people have of Black culture that, although there might be some truth to, aren’t ones that need to be mocked in this way. Especially considering that for a lot of the CH audience, unlike the people who create the content, a lot of the kind of “Black people are so ___, and that’s why this is funny” opinions are probably more sincere and mean spirited, and this only provides confirmation to them that the way they think is ok.
Again, I don’t think Jeff or myself is trying to say that the video is some sort of huge racist statement, or that either of us don’t make the same kind of mistakes when it comes to social issues, but moreso that this probably should have been thought out a little more in how it was done.
(It’s always awkward— and sort-of innapropriate— to talk about something as sensitive and complicated as race/racism in such an impersonal forum like this, but I guess I just wanted to share my support for the statement that Jeff made above. If anyone wants to talk with me more about this, please email me because I think any dialogue, whether you agree or disagree, is probably worth having.)
