An old joke has been in fashion of late. It’s a recurring gag on 30 Rock and it’s standard fair for white comedians who want to touch on race. Though it’s a cheap trick, I have found one version that realizes whatever potential the joke has and points to some contradictions that make it work. With his characteristic subtlety, Louis C.K. tells it this way: “I’m not saying that white people are better. I’m saying that being white is clearly better.”
The worst versions of this joke fail to pick up on the contradiction Louis foregrounds. One particularly weak take compares being a straight white man to the “easy” setting on a video game. Ostensibly, the author is trying to introduce the concept of privilege to people who balk at the term, but it’s not surprising that as you dig through his post, you discover the subtle ways that the metaphor blames poor white people for failing to realize their privilege, that is, for failing to realize that they have privilege and for failing to make something of that privilege (as the post explains, they didn’t bone up on the right “skills”). The assumption is that you can refer to people as white trash because they are trash: they had white privilege, but they made poor life choices.
Yet this isn't even half of the problem with the post, because as with most popular ways of talking about race in this country, the real victims tend not to be white men. Historians have pointed out that in the nineteenth century, when class privilege was less obscured than it is today, the figure of the white dissolute served as a warning to privileged white men about what could happen if they failed to behave according to a strict code of discipline (consider, for example, an article by Warren Hedges included in this reader from 1997). On the one hand this left white men open to wise-cracks for being too uptight or even brutal, but on the other, it managed to discipline them into thinking and acting in a specific way, and it proved useful in justifying the privilege they enjoyed. The idea was that white men enjoyed a little advantage because they were better people, they earned their privilege through discipline, and they called the shots because they were better qualified.
Of course, contemporary comics supposedly don’t take this last step. We’re supposed to believe that they’re making fun of white privilege, not justifying it, and if you try to critique what they’re saying, you’ll find yourself in the company of those right-wing bigots who are always eager to assert that white men don’t get no respect. The “being white is better” joke is supposed to be speaking the truth to power, calling attention to white privilege.
So why is it that by and large, comfortable middle-class white men love this joke? I think it’s because this kind of ironic recognition of their privilege is a way for them to enjoy that privilege without thinking twice about where it comes from or how it works. The video game analogy uses a metaphor that teaches you nothing about the workings of privilege. It serves more as a way of getting people to swallow their catechism, of encouraging people to recite their confession without examining their complicity. Privileged white men know they have something they don’t deserve, and they have no problem talking about it, but by wiping poor white men out of the picture, they can imagine that there’s nothing they could be doing differently; after all, they can’t help it if they were born white and male.
While it’s easy to show how hollow the joke is by citing the plight of impoverished white people, the more important point is that most people abused by the semi-guilty giggling aren’t even those white men who are poor. As was the case in the 19th century, people of color continue to bear the bulk of our sick society’s costs. Privileged white men get to have a good laugh while perpetuating the processes that reproduce inequality generation after generation, and if their hypocrisy is most obvious when you hear the ways they talk (or don’t talk) about poor white men, the cost of those processes is still born disproportionately by women and people of color.
What I like about Louis’ version of the joke is that he actually manages to approach this more uncomfortable line, even if he doesn’t quite cross it. His wording of the joke alludes to an important point: saying that being white is better isn’t necessarily all that far from saying that white is better. What he doesn’t get around to pointing out is that unless we start to talk about the social processes that produce and reproduce the privileges enjoyed by white men, being white is going to continue to be better. Racism will remain a mechanism of privilege as long as the root causes of brutal inequality will remain unaddressed. White men do have an easy setting in certain ways, or at least they enjoy privilege, and that is a problem that needs to be talked about. But don't let that distract you from the injustices of the game itself.
The worst versions of this joke fail to pick up on the contradiction Louis foregrounds. One particularly weak take compares being a straight white man to the “easy” setting on a video game. Ostensibly, the author is trying to introduce the concept of privilege to people who balk at the term, but it’s not surprising that as you dig through his post, you discover the subtle ways that the metaphor blames poor white people for failing to realize their privilege, that is, for failing to realize that they have privilege and for failing to make something of that privilege (as the post explains, they didn’t bone up on the right “skills”). The assumption is that you can refer to people as white trash because they are trash: they had white privilege, but they made poor life choices.
Yet this isn't even half of the problem with the post, because as with most popular ways of talking about race in this country, the real victims tend not to be white men. Historians have pointed out that in the nineteenth century, when class privilege was less obscured than it is today, the figure of the white dissolute served as a warning to privileged white men about what could happen if they failed to behave according to a strict code of discipline (consider, for example, an article by Warren Hedges included in this reader from 1997). On the one hand this left white men open to wise-cracks for being too uptight or even brutal, but on the other, it managed to discipline them into thinking and acting in a specific way, and it proved useful in justifying the privilege they enjoyed. The idea was that white men enjoyed a little advantage because they were better people, they earned their privilege through discipline, and they called the shots because they were better qualified.
Of course, contemporary comics supposedly don’t take this last step. We’re supposed to believe that they’re making fun of white privilege, not justifying it, and if you try to critique what they’re saying, you’ll find yourself in the company of those right-wing bigots who are always eager to assert that white men don’t get no respect. The “being white is better” joke is supposed to be speaking the truth to power, calling attention to white privilege.
So why is it that by and large, comfortable middle-class white men love this joke? I think it’s because this kind of ironic recognition of their privilege is a way for them to enjoy that privilege without thinking twice about where it comes from or how it works. The video game analogy uses a metaphor that teaches you nothing about the workings of privilege. It serves more as a way of getting people to swallow their catechism, of encouraging people to recite their confession without examining their complicity. Privileged white men know they have something they don’t deserve, and they have no problem talking about it, but by wiping poor white men out of the picture, they can imagine that there’s nothing they could be doing differently; after all, they can’t help it if they were born white and male.
While it’s easy to show how hollow the joke is by citing the plight of impoverished white people, the more important point is that most people abused by the semi-guilty giggling aren’t even those white men who are poor. As was the case in the 19th century, people of color continue to bear the bulk of our sick society’s costs. Privileged white men get to have a good laugh while perpetuating the processes that reproduce inequality generation after generation, and if their hypocrisy is most obvious when you hear the ways they talk (or don’t talk) about poor white men, the cost of those processes is still born disproportionately by women and people of color.
What I like about Louis’ version of the joke is that he actually manages to approach this more uncomfortable line, even if he doesn’t quite cross it. His wording of the joke alludes to an important point: saying that being white is better isn’t necessarily all that far from saying that white is better. What he doesn’t get around to pointing out is that unless we start to talk about the social processes that produce and reproduce the privileges enjoyed by white men, being white is going to continue to be better. Racism will remain a mechanism of privilege as long as the root causes of brutal inequality will remain unaddressed. White men do have an easy setting in certain ways, or at least they enjoy privilege, and that is a problem that needs to be talked about. But don't let that distract you from the injustices of the game itself.
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