If the shoe fits…

I was checking the Boston Comedy Festival website to read up info on this year’s fest. Among the things I noticed was that I am not the biggest comic on the show. The biggest is some guy named J.J. who is 7′ tall and 410 lbs. He also went to Amherst (Williams’ rival). But let’s be honest: 6’7″ is hilarious; 7 feet tall is overkill.

Then I noticed that I am slated to appear on an “urban comedy night” show. First off there was a scheduling problem because I am slated for my competition slot at a time that overlaps the urban comedy show. And a chance at $10,000 trumps urban comedy.

For those of you that don’t know, “urban” is comedy’s way of saying black people telling jokes. This does not include Latinos because they get their own comedy theme nights at clubs, often starting with the word “Ay!” or ending with “salsa” or “spicy.”

Some people reading this may be saying that although I am at my peak darkness in early fall, passing me off on a show full of black comics will be tough. That is probably true, but in no way my most awkward racial experience. That honor would be competing on the Frederick Douglass national Moot Court team for Georgetown University Law Center (not a school, a center).

Back in 2003 when I advanced a few rounds in the intra-law center moot court competition I was invited to join the Douglass team (DNA tests were conducted to validate my membership and I was forced to grow out my hair). At the competition in Los Angeles I felt like a grain of light brown sugar in a jar full of black pepper. And I was the tallest one there as well, which made the game of “Where’s Haitian-Irish Waldo?” quite easy. But in a few days I was over my insecurities when I realized that no one seemed to care. Perhaps it was because like me, the namesake of the competition, Frederick Douglass, had also been half white, although his conception was probably a little less consensual than mine, although my parents do not get along that well. That may have been it, or it may have been because one law school had fielded Team Eminem, an all white team (there is no discrimination based on race, but it still looked like Whitesnake had crashed a Motown special). End of story – my partner and I won 1st place and I became known in moot court circles as the Great Half White Hope. So I am not sweating the Urban show – I just can’t make it because I need to try and win $10,000.