How to Make White People Laugh Read online

  Question

  The cast of Duck Dynasty: Muslim, Amish, or other?

  Answer

  I know what you’re thinking: Every man on that show has a beard and runs around with guns so, total Muz. But, the patriarch on the show, Phil Robertson, dislikes technology and doesn’t own a cell phone, which puts him squarely in the Amish camp. But the answer is: other! Ding ding! (The family belongs to the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ, wherein homosexuality is a sin.)

  I’m not saying that there aren’t Middle Eastern men who are weapon-and-beard based. Of course there are! But again, that’s a minority. The proportion of bearded dudes with weapons in the Middle East is probably the same as bearded dudes with weapons in the United States. It should also be noted that we would probably have more bearded dudes in the U.S. but we don’t, because some guys grow patchy beards, so it doesn’t really make sense for them to have beards at all. But they should be counted because they would have beards if their faces let them.

  This isn’t the first time that we’ve depicted men of a certain racial and ethnic background as violent. We’ve done it to African-American men, too, presenting them in mass media imagery as savage brutes. That shit goes back to Birth of a Nation in 1915.7 What’s that thing about repeating mistakes? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame another group with the savage brute imagery? Maybe it’s easier to wage large-scale wars in the Middle East if the people you’re killing are seen as animalistic. Because if we replace the weapon with a guitar, these iconic Muslims would end up looking like tan American folk singers, and maybe the killing wouldn’t be so easy.

  3. Middle Eastern people pray their pants off.

  Oh yes, the iconic image of the Muslim in prayer. Holy shit, how much do brown people pray? I mean, really? What’s worse is, it’s that really intense praying where they have to get up and down and kneel and bow—it’s almost like a CrossFit workout—and every time there’s a news story involving Muslims, that CrossFit-praying-Muslim image is streaming on a bunch of different channels. It plays so much that it seems like Middle Easterners just constantly pray.

  Photo by Antonio Melina/Agência Brasil

  This kind of imagery leads people to think that all of us Middle Easterners are hardcore, practicing Muslims. And what’s the stereotype of hardcore, practicing people of any religion? They’re the zealot-nutjobby ones. In the case of Muslims, praying = nutjob.

  Contrast this to the image of, let’s say, a Christian, kneeling with their hands in prayer position at their heart. Are they considered nutjobs or pure-of-heart-jobs?

  You’ve probably watched a scene in a movie where a little girl prays with her dad? Picture it, there’s that moment where the dad and the little girl are barricaded in the little girl’s room because there are monsters outside. The monsters have already eaten most of the family, and the dad and the little girl are all that’s left. Once the barricade gives out, the dad is going to have to fight the monsters. But, first, Dad and little girl have to pray! They get down on their knees, lean against a bed with a sparkly pink comforter on it, and they pray. They pray hard. It’s that prayer that gets them through the next scene where the dad has to bare-knuckle-fight the monsters.

  I like that scene in those movies. It makes them human. But for some reason the iconic Muslim prayer gets reduced to nutjobbery. Isn’t praying supposed to be a nice thing? Isn’t it supposed to help us fight the monsters?

  4. Is that a nuclear weapon in your pants or are you happy to see me? Yes, actually, it is a nuclear weapon, because I’m Iranian and we all have one we keep in our pants.

  This is more like a concept than an icon but it basically goes like this: If you’re Iranian, you’ve been developing nuclear weapons. The thing with Iranians is that we’re all enriching uranium all the time. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an Iranian who doesn’t know how to enrich uranium. In fact, I’m enriching uranium right now. It smells like bacon.

  Delicious Uranium Cake

  The desire for nuclear weaponry is the only reason Iranians are in the news! There’s basically been a cavalcade of stories where either Iran is maybe enriching weapons-grade uranium, or they’re probably totally enriching weapons-grade uranium. Or inspectors were in the country and they couldn’t find anything but that’s probably because the Iranians have figured out how to enrich invisible uranium. Or it sorta looks like Iran could be on the verge of having a whole bunch of atomic bombs, or the bombs are probably even pointed at every country and even though there’s no real proof we should invade and get this over with.

  What I like about this endless nuclear haranguing is that it implies two things: (1) Iranians are super into mass murder, the kind that comes from setting off nuclear weapons; and (2) Iranians are smart enough to build nuclear weapons. Oh yeah! We smart! At least this is a slight improvement over the “dusty dudes in the desert” icon, because those dudes seem kind of dumb. They don’t look like nuclear engineers. But I would say the positives here are outweighed by the “murderous warlords with plans of global nuclear domination” thing. So it’s a net loss.

  IRANIANS AND ARABS, TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

  Often Iranians and Arabs get lumped into the same thing. I’ve been called Arab a million times and I absolutely don’t care. But I should mention for the sake of accuracy that they are technically different. Like how the French and Italian are technically different even though they both make delicious bread. Iranians and Arabs do share an alphabet (though that alphabet was imposed on the Iranians through some invasion shenanigans), and a majority of both groups are Muslim. But our languages and food are completely different. The first recorded Iranians showed up around 538 BC and the Arabs showed up around AD 835. So you know, they’re different. But again, if you get it wrong, I won’t be mad.

  And that concludes our lesson on iconic representations. See what I mean? Icons are sticky and limiting all at the same time. The ones allotted to people like me—violent, covered, and bearded—are nothing to write home about8… and they offend my fashion senses. This, my friends, is stage one—admitting there’s a problem. There’s a problem! Now, what are we gonna do about it?

  Here’s What I’m Gonna Do About It, aka Lube the Nation

  There’s a definitive book on race—but it’s usually for black people. There’s a definitive book on religion—but it’s usually for Christian people. There’s a definitive book on the immigrant experience—but it’s usually about Ellis Island, or it’s about Mexican people, or it’s about Ellis Island. We seem to think those are the only groups out there! I want to give voice to the multihyphenated Americans caught in the margins. I want to give voice to all those feelings of self-censorship and cross-cultural pressure that they feel. I want mainstream American culture to take note, because we can’t be ignored anymore, and recognizing us is a matter of social justice.

  But here’s the deal: I can give voice all I want, but that don’t mean shit if I can’t get through to white America. Now, I hear you saying: Why do white people matter anyway?

  Because, here’s the thing: White people (still) sorta control stuff. In fact, here’s a handy list of things white people dominate that matter a great deal to humans. This is by no means an exhaustive list—I’m forgetting at least one to six items—but I think it’s good enough to demonstrate the extent of what white people control:

  The Government

  The Economy

  Outer Space

  HBO’s Game of Thrones

  The career of Tom Hanks

  International currency valuation

  Professional hockey

  iPhones

  The breeding of small dogs

  War

  Printer ink

  Peace

  Monogrammed towels

  Culture

  I know what you’re thinking: Come on, White People handle so much of this stuff so well! Why rock the boat?

  Don’t get me wrong, they are proficient at a lot of it. The career of Tom Hanks? I mean,
how much better could that be? From Big to Forrest Gump to Captain Phillips, white people did very well with Tom. But war, for example, could use some tweaking. We have too much of it and we keep ordering more even though we know we won’t ever finish it, kinda like the bottomless breadsticks at Olive Garden. And don’t get me started on printer ink cartridges. Why are they so expensive, and how come they only print like four pages before they need changing again? The breeding of small dogs? None of them can ever breathe! That can’t be right, can it?

  When it comes to that last item, culture, that’s where humanity is really in trouble. Culture breeds—not small dogs, but identity. Culture creates awareness around issues, it entertains and saddens, it can encourage commitment to a social contract or strengthen personal hygiene in public. Culture is that powerful. Culture creates the icons we follow, that we see ourselves in, that we orient ourselves toward. It’s culture that tells us to love or hate, accept or tolerate, embrace or reject.

  When you’re a hyphenated American, you don’t get a place in “culture.” I’m an Iranian-American-Muslim-female-honey-mustard-enthusiast. You might be an Indo-Romanian-dumpling-fanatic or Jamaican-Irish-rum-con-noisseur (which would make you extra fun). The hyphenated types aren’t represented in mainstream media. Everybody Loves Raymond was not about an Indian-American family living next door to naan-obsessed in-laws. Friends wasn’t about a Filipino-American brother and sister9 who become friends with an aspiring Czech-American actor,10 an entrepreneurial Sri-Lankan-American,11 and a quirky Ethiopian-Jew.12 The television I grew up on made me aspire to, at best, Jennifer Aniston’s haircut.

  But I don’t want Jennifer Aniston’s haircut!13 I want a place in culture. I want icons. So throughout this book, I’m going to share some anecdotes from my life, some manifestos from the trenches of social justice comedy, some unscientific charts and graphs, and hopefully only a handful of typos. The idea is that if people laugh, maybe they’ll start fewer wars. Seriously. So much of our social discord comes from dominant and minority groups not getting along, not understanding each other, not lightening up! I think laughter is the key to all sorts of conflict resolution, and in these pages I want to show you how, why, where, and when this laughter is useful. I’ll do that while, you know, talking about myself.

  I grew up thinking, Fuck the man! but now, all I wanna do is make the man laugh! Because if you can disarm the mainstream through laughter, they’re not only in store for some amazing jokes, but I daresay they’re in store for some serious cultural shifts.

  Protesting, lobbying, begging, yelling, lecturing, afterschool special-ing—all of these things are good. But they can’t compete with rock-hard humor. Comedy is the great lubricant, metaphorically, for easing people into tough discussions and, literally, for the few dudes who’ve wanted to bone me after seeing me do stand-up.

  I wanna lube up the whole nation. And when I’m done lubing up the nation, I’m gonna take a giant tube of it to the world. I won’t stop until we all just get along.

  CHAPTER 1

  Iranians Have No Gaydar and Other Things I Learned Growing Up in Palm Springs

  I grew up in Palm Springs, California. Beyond its fame as the intellectual birthplace of one Negin Farsad, it’s also internationally renowned as a golfing mecca and spa innovation center. You may know it as the leisure stronghold of the Rat Pack in the 1950s. Or perhaps you remember it fondly from that one episode of Beverly Hills 90210 where everyone went to Palm Springs for President’s Day Weekend.1 And yet to others it’s that “place where Sonny Bono was a mayor, or was that Carmel?” Needless to say, Palm Springs is a bird of many feathers.

  Palm Springs is not known for having a whole bunch of Middle Easterners. But the addition of me and my parents in the early ’80s doubled that population to an unprecedented eight.2 Though, technically, we’re actually Iranian with a smattering of Azerbaijani. This smattering certainly doesn’t mean anything to the average American, because the average American doesn’t know what Azerbaijan is! (Please see Appendix A for clarification.) Let’s just say I’m an ethnically brown Muz type who grew up in a resort town.

  APPENDIX A

  What Is This Azerbaijan Thing You Speak Of?

  Is it a country, a type of banana, a Bulgarian MMA fighter, a manufacturer of thimbles? Totally unclear! Hint: If you guessed “a country that borders the north of Iran” then ding ding ding, you are correct! If you guessed that Iran has a province of the same name, you deserve accolades upon chocolate treats. And if you smell some kind of historical disputed territory situation, you get to read the rest of this book! There is a boatload of Azerbaijanis in Iran, they speak both Azeri (a dialect of Turkish) and Farsi (the language all those Iranians be speakin’). Iranians make jokes about Azeris in the way of “Polack” jokes or maybe “redneck” jokes, but funnier, much funnier. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of love between the Farsi and Azeri speakers, a shared religion (Shia Islam), and my parents. And, by extension, me.

  I was also the only kid on a solid, hardcore block of senior citizens. That block was then surrounded by an even larger neighborhood of… senior citizens. My childhood involved a lot of playing on the streets by myself, and then biking in those same streets, alone. And let’s not forget those times I spent choreographing full-scale dance routines on the street while dodging oncoming Cadillacs—very slow-moving Cadillacs. Of course, those were solo dance routines. Because there were no other kids in my neighborhood. Because there were only senior citizens.

  At some point in my childhood, my neighborhood started attracting gay gentlemen. You’ve probably heard this story before: Artists and gay peeps and gay artist peeps discover a downtrodden neighborhood, they start moving in, making it cool—suddenly mailboxes are adorned with a “design element” and gardening is replaced with “landscaping”—and their very cool presence drives up the prices, and suddenly there is more vegan cheese, and then the artists have to move out. They call it gentrification.

  LIVING AMONG SENIOR CITIZENS, THE BULLET POINTS

  When you turn retirement age, you not only get a subscription to AARP but a zest for bedazzling sweatshirts.

  Senior citizens are afraid to open the door to little girls selling Girl Scout cookies, especially if they’re accompanied by a mother who is only three inches taller than them.

  Old people tell really funny stories about the olden days, so you should actually ask for those and make friends. None of their stories involve the Internet.

  A lot of them are well versed in ballroom dancing.

  Cocoon was real.

  Cherry pie is too sweet, but a lemon loaf is just right.

  The only difference is, in Palm Springs, the neighborhoods weren’t downtrodden. They were just full of old people who didn’t necessarily have the refined taste to match a vintage weather vane with their midcentury modern home. My immigrant parents bought one of these houses that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies Van der Bloob or whoever. But they definitely had no idea it was cool and were basically embarrassed by how angular everything was. You know what all the xenophobes say, “Those darned immigrants come to this country and take all of our midcentury modern homes.” Guilty as charged.

  But you know who knows how to appreciate the shit out of a midcentury mod? Gay dudes! So they started being our neighbors. I’m not saying they weren’t old. Most of them were still old. But they were gay, which added a certain je ne sais quoi. Our neighborhood went from “very sleepy” to “moderately sleepy” overnight.

  In the Farsad home we had two rules: (1) never leave your cup too close to the edge of a table; and (2) misidentify all gay neighbors as “roommates.” Look, according to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there are no gay people in Iran (please see Exhibit B). So my parents’ gaydar wasn’t just poorly functioning, it hadn’t even been hooked up.

  EXHIBIT B

  Ridiculous Statements by Former President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

  “In Iran, we don’t have homosexu
als, like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”

  Hal and Bob were our neighbors. Hal was about six foot four and Bob was five foot two—Hal was black and Bob was white. So not only were these gentlemen rocking the boat by being a nonnormative3 gay couple, they were also an interracial nonnormative gay couple and also an inter-height-al nonnormative gay couple! (Again, Bob was really short.) My parents loved them. They thought Hal and Bob were lovely, delightful, neighborly, and clearly just roommates.

  The benefits of calling them roommates were manifold: (1) You didn’t have to explain to your daughter what homosexuality was. (2) You didn’t have to activate any homophobia, because deep down inside you’re not even homophobic. (3) The word roommates has no larger sociopolitical implications. Roommates can be as interracial as they want! Roommates can be whatever gender they want! There is social pressure to hate the gays, but there is no such pressure to hate roommates.

  Record Scratch!

  Middle-of-the-Chapter Chapter Break to

  Make a Technical Clarification on My Previous

  Whereabouts

  I feel like it’s a bit misleading to start talking about my life in these pages in Palm Springs, California, when in fact, I actually started out my life in New Haven, Connecticut. I was there for my first two years of life and have no memories of it. Except to say that it must have worked on my subconscious, because later in life I applied to Yale… and was rejected. So, fuck Yale… is what I would say if I was still bitter about it, but I’m not bitter, right? So who cares. I hope Yale is happy and healthy and has a thousand little Yale babies and really rock-hard abs. I’m totally over it.