Baratunde Thurston on fighting racist absurdity with laughs

Read the Full Transcript

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  Now to our regular feature Brief But Spectacular.

  Tonight, author and comedian Baratunde Thurston on using humor to educate and skewer racism with satire.

• BARATUNDE THURSTON, Author/Comedian:

  When you are the black friend in your circle of people, that means you're the one black person that these friends have, you're kind of like a double agent, and you help prevent all-out thermonuclear war.

  Nailed it.

  I grew up in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., before it was flooded by white people. I was raised by my mother alone. My father was killed when I was 7 or 8 years old. And my mom worked for the government, no college degree, very self-taught, the most resourceful and intelligent person I have ever known.

  In college, I started writing a satirical e-mail newsletter. And I got very frustrated that my peers at Harvard University didn't know anything about what was going on in the world. So, I'm like, yes, we're paying 38 bagillion dollars a second to be here. You should know what's going on in Sri Lanka. And I took it upon myself to educate my peers with less stridency and more hilarity.

  I served at The Onion for about five years as political editor and director of digital strategy. And for the most part, I was the black people at The Onion. The Onion does a lot of great photo art, so I played the part of a lot of other black people in the Photoshop job. I was the mayor of Detroit. I was all three Supremes. I was President Obama's hand, and I wrote, like, executive orders with that hand. It was powerful.

  The book "How to Be Black" is mostly a memoir, and it's peppered with satirical lessons that I have learned along the way, how to be the black employee, how to be the black friend, how to be the next black president.

  If a white person is holding a book called "How to Be Black," they're like, oh, you poor thing. Like, you think a book is going to change this for you? But if a black person is holding it, they're like, oh, you poor thing. Do you need a refresher course? And so I'm glad to have offered that into the world.

  Racism is an absurd act in our history as well. And so, sometimes, we have got to come at it sideways, come at it comedically to try to move forward politically.

  My name is Baratunde Thurston. This is my Brief But Spectacular take on how to be black.