Racial inequality in comedy?
I was watching Martin Lawrence's Runteldat and he has a short bit about how he hates being stereotyped and discriminated against as a young black male. Fair enough, I know it sucks.
But immediately following his little rant, he segued into a rather long bit that he spends racially stereotyping all sorts of people, focusing on mainly Arab nations and Arab Americans.
He brought out the big guns too. Offensive caricatures of Arabs, complete with really bad accents and talking about smelling bad and cab driving.
He does a joke about when he gets on a plane and sees an Arab man get on he freaks out and yells something along the lines of "Don't fuck with this plane or I'll fuck with you" and that he doesn't think they should be allowed to wear their "towel" on their heads in public.
I'm not racist in the least, but unfortunately I was raised by two racist(not overtly "I hate N***ers!", but the kind that were always extra wary around non-white folks) parents.
Because of the way my parents speak about people I'm kind of hyper-aware of so called "reverse racism" or the "unfair way white people get stepped all over by minorities" that my parents used to point out all the time.
I realize it's all jokes... but there's some truth behind most, if not all stand up bits.
Am I being over sensitive or does anyone else agree that the double standards are kind of bullshit?
And I don't just mean black people, any ethnic group except for white people are allowed to take potshots at other races without even a second thought. But a white dude breaks out racial jokes and he gets more or less labeled racist.