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White Dude, Black Dude
- 106 statements
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This trope is when a comedian takes a mundane activity, like driving a car or dialing a phone, and describes how one group of people stereotypically performs it differently than another group. The different ways they approach the activity are supposed to humorously highlight the cultural differences between the groups. A typical example of the trope compares white and Black people, as suggested by the trope name. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Historically, a lot of Black comedians based routines on this format, which was shocking, transgressive and deeply satisfying for Black audiences when they first heard it in the late '70s and early '80s. As part of the "blaxploitation" movement where Black people started reclaiming and accepting certain Black stereotypes as positive rather than negative portrayals of Black culture, especially of Black masculinity, male Black stand-up comics started to turn white stereotypes of Blacks being "uncivilized" and "dangerous" on their head, recreating the stereotype as white men being over-civilized, timid and cowardly while Black men were powerful, independent and cool. Comedians such as Richard Pryor and Steve Harvey were early pioneers of the trope, and later comedians followed suit. Over time, this style of comedy has become an Undead Horse Trope, and still it continues to live on, and on, and on as a Stock Joke. Successful comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle have become very successful with their own take on the format, often taking great care to find fresh new angles that work off of audience expectations. Younger and less talented comics, however, play the trope very straight to create cliche jokes for cheap laughs. If a fictional comedian starts employing material like this and plays it all straight, it is more often than not a shorthand for him being a milquetoast performer who deliberately appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator or even an outright lazy hack. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })Generally, only minority comedians really can get away with using this trope without massively offending people, unless maybe the white dude is using it for Self-Deprecation or to call out racist attitudes. Examples: |
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Down To Earth (2001) | |
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While Chappelle's Show did this straight on occasion, one particular skit parodied the concept, with Dave telling his White Dude, Black Dude comedy routine through interpretive poetry: | |
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Johnny Ryan did a parody of this trope with Magneto doing a stand-up routine about "mutants do it like this". Ending with him getting carried away and blowing up the Earth. | |
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The Simpsons Has an early parody of the trope, in which Homer watches a typical stand-up special featuring a Black comic in front of a brick wall delivering trite impressions of how Black and white people drive. Homer bursts into hearty laughter, shouting, "It's true! We're so lame!" Homer tries his own hand at this style of comedy in another episode, saying, "See, white people have names like Lenny, while Black people have names like Carl." He laughs hysterically, while no one else reacts. Groundskeeper Willie did a stand-up routine comparing how people from North and South Edinburgh play golf. He does get a laugh from the lone Scotsman in the audience. |
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Parodied in Cyanide and Happiness. "White guys walk like this. Black guys walk like this. Zarcbukloids walk like this." | |
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Community: "Origins of Vampire Mythology" had a very odd version of this in The Tag: Abed does an extremely specific Stand-Up Comedy bit about differences in the way he and Troy brush their teeth. Naturally, only he and Troy get it. Another odd variant is used in "App Development and Condiments". Jeff's comedy routine is all about how "Twos", "Threes", and "Fours" act differently from each other. |
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King of the Hill had Bobby copy the routine from a Black driver's safety course instructor who taught through comedy, voiced by none other than Chris Rock. Rock's character advises Bobby to find humor from his own life as a white kid, however his research leads him to a white supremacist website and things go downhill from there. | |
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The Daily Show featured Jon Stewart trying it, inspired by Barack Obama's debate comedy. | |
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Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had a variation where two cast members go to see a Black comedian that is supposed to be a rising star in the stand-up scene, hoping to add more diversity and a new viewpoint to the predominantly-white writing staff. Unfortunately, his act is nothing but Black stereotypes and cliches, including outdated White Dude, Black Dude jokes, and they leave in disgust that he is just reinforcing the stereotype. | |
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Eddie had actually touched off some minor controversy with his The Nutty Professor remake, in which the Richard Simmons Expy (played by Murphy) was so convincing, people were accusing him of "reverse blackface." | |
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30 Rock has this as the staple of Tracy Jordan's comedy. Also used as parody once to illustrate how Tracy was growing distant from his fanbase: | |
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Done on the Futurama episode "My Three Suns" with a Trisolian comedian doing a routine about the difference between those who live under the yellow sun and those who live under the red sun. Fry laughs his ass off and agrees, despite having been on the planet for about half an hour. Which tells you oh so much. | |
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A part of the humor between Mario and Black Yoshi from SuperMarioLogan is that Mario is never certain what to do while Black Yoshi often has a bad or destructive idea that may or may not work in the end. Furthermore, as much as Mario gets annoyed with Black Yoshi, Black Yoshi often is treated as the more outgoing and powerful of the duo, where Mario is (prior to Rosalina's appearances) more of a coward who cries. | |
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Parodied on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, in his segment on the War on Drugs. | |
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Saturday Night Live's "Black Jeopardy!" sketches often rely on this, with the Token White contestant on a Black version of Jeopardy! (or a non-American Black man like Drake or T'Challa) getting the answers comically wrong. One version featuring Tom Hanks, however, subverted it, with Hanks' blue-collar, MAGA-hat-wearing white guy getting a lot of the answers right and the Black host and fellow contestants often echoing his bigotry and Lower-Class Lout behavior so long as the subject of race relations never came up. The joke is that, save for the racial divide, many Black people aren't so different from white Trump voters in terms of their religious and cultural attitudes. | |
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Basically the plot of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode 'Squirrel Jokes'. Nervous first-time comedian SpongeBob kills with jokes about how squirrels are dumb, much to the chagrin of his squirrel friend Sandy Cheeks, who happens to be the smartest person in town. At the end of the episode, he realizes it was wrong to single out Sandy and indulges in stereotypes about every different type of creature in the audience. | |
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In Living Color! made use of the trope. In one sketch, it lampshades the trope as one of the quintessential types of stand-up comedy, along with "Old Guy Who Complains About the Present", "Self-Deprecating Woman" and "Crazy Prop Guy". | |
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In an episode of Good Times, J.J. dreamed that he'd been replaced by a white guy. Said white guy wanted eggs benedict for breakfast, wore a pullover sweater, and said things like "Surely you jest!". | |
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Parodied in Family Guy (from "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story"): Mahatma Gandhi is a stand-up comic, and says, "...and the Black people are always like 'Hey, bitch!' and the Indian people, we do not call our women in such a way." In some syndicated airings, "Black people" is Bowdlerised to "Americans". | |
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The comedy team of "Tim and Tom" (Tim Reid, later famous as Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati, and Tom Dreesen, still a working standup) not only used this trope, but embodied it. Performing in the late '60s and early '70s, they were the first — and last — "interracial comedy team" in America. Reid and Dreesen told the story of their brief career as "Tim and Tom" in a 2008 book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White. | |
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