This weekend I worked a few shows in Long Island.  The crowds were typical Long Island – politically conservative (finally I got to see some Carl Paladino signs!), comedically crude (with obvious exceptions within each audience).  My clever jokes got polite laughter and any joke that I had that included the word fu*k or sex received much more positive feedback.

The real dilemma for me, however, was the late show on Saturday night.  I was sitting at the club bar pre-show watching the Knicks game and Knicks bearded forward Ronnie Turiaf was on the screen.  Here is what I got to hear from one of the caucasion bar patrons, who was waiting to go into the late show:

“Can anyone teach these guys to trim a beard!  Look at this guy – he’s like the other guy with the beard… (NY Jets receiver) Braylon Edwards – these guys can’t trim their beards! (Pointing at the screen) Maybe if this guy got another stint in jail they could teach him to trim his beard!  (mumbling with his friend) – Nigga please! (back slapping laughter)”

Now, as far as I know Ronnie Turiaf is not a criminal, but he is a black man playing basketball, which to some people is the same thing.  But I have to go perform comedy and try to entertain this obviously racist piece of sh*t?  Of course my joke about my Mom sponsoring my father for 46 cents a month got raucous laughter, which it generally does, but after many years I can start to tell when an audience is enjoying it too much.  I do not mean to make this seem like Dave Chappelle, who quit his show, in part because he felt like he was giving white people too much license to gang up in mean spirited laughter and N-word dropping on satires of black people.  But it certainly felt a little like that.

I never really considered leaving the club because it was one audience member and I am in no position to burn comedy bridges, but the fact that that man and his friends and many of his ilk sat in judgment of my comedy and may have been entertained by me makes me want to vomit.  I thought as I got older I would see less racism, but it seems the more I meet people and see different groups of people as I perform comedy, the more I see the uglyside of people.  I am in the unique position of looking fairly white to the untrained or underexposed eye and I have always been privy to hearing real racism – not the rants of wild-eyed racists who want to lynch negroes, but the prejudicial jokes and bad taste that go with the everyday, ordinary racist who thinks he or she is outside the presence of minorities.  It is still ugly in America, but this weekend was the first time where this reality infected my comedy career.

When I got on stage and told the crowd I was half-Haitian, half-Irish, a Caucasian male in the front row shook his head and said, “no way.”  And I laughed and said, “Maybe you are right – perhaps my Dad has been lying to me my whole life.  Or maybe you are just wondering if you said anything racist near me.”

The deafening silence that followed that line in the club was the best thing I heard all night.