Comedian Colin Quinn has a unique way of bridging the racial divide — racist jokes.
In The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, he stereotypes and offends just about every race, religion, and ethnic group he has ever interacted with in New York City. He says he’s prepared for the backlash, and that it does actually bother him.
“I know a lot of you people are going to read this book and say, ‘This guy is an asshole. He’s not helping the racial divisions in this country. He is just trying to be funny and clever, and he’s neither. I always care if people think I’m an asshole, even if it’s people who I think are assholes,” he told The Daily Beast.
He’s offending everyone precisely because he cares so much. His goal is for the American people to speak freely in the modern “PC world,” as Quinn calls it.
Comparing college students’ mindset to an Orwellian “groupthink,” Quinn said that they have taken any words they call “offensive” and decided to be outraged by them.
“We should be more outraged over racist behavior, not over a joke about race that is clearly not intended to demonize any group but to raise issues about the racial divide,” he told The Daily Beast.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t things we shouldn’t say about other people — far from it.
The issue is that, as Quinn told The Daily Beast, “In America, we can talk and joke about every issue from war to genocide, but not race. At the very least, I want people to admit that we can’t raise issues of race in this country out of fear of being labeled a racist or even getting fired from your job for it.”
Quinn isn’t the first comedian to bring up these ideas recently.
Jerry Seinfeld suggested on ESPN Radio last week that young Americans, particularly college students, are too quick to label things “sexist” and “racist.”
“They just want to use these words. ‘That’s racist. That’s sexist. That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t even know what they’re talking about.”
Chris Rock also said that he had to stop performing on college campuses because the students were “way too conservative.”
“Not like they’re voting Republican,” he told Vulture back in February, “but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody.”
It’s ironic that the people who are trying so hard to be tolerant and open minded are often the ones preventing an open discussion.
