by Mia McKenzie

A lot of strange things have happened since The Colbert Report tweeted a line from a skit that Stephen Colbert did on his show last week about Dan Snyder’s new ‘R—skins’ Foundation, wherein he attempted to highlight the absurdity and offensiveness of it by invoking racial slurs against Asians. Many Asian American activists, led by freelance writer Suey Park, have pushed back against Colbert and the offending joke by calling for the show’s cancellation with a Twitter hashtag—#CancelColbert—that went viral last Thursday night. In response, Colbert fans have defended him, some of them respectfully and many of them—in particular white men on Twitter—with racist slurs and rape and death threats directed towards the activists, most of them young Asian women, who called Colbert out.

The horrifying behavior of so many of the white men defending Colbert is not the focus of this piece, but I do want to say this: it’s disgusting and dangerous and downright criminal and it needs to stop. If we’ve learned anything in the age of social media, it’s that people will say anything when they can do it anonymously and not have to look you in the eye. Making threats from behind a keyboard takes zero courage, which is why it’s the preferred pastime of so many assholes. But let’s not let that reality cause us to not take these threats seriously. They are serious and the people making them should be held accountable.

What I’m interested in here, though, is the response of people of color to this Colbert debacle.

Let me say here that I wouldn’t have called myself a huge fan of The Colbert Report. But I’ve watched it plenty over the years and often found it amusing. I think Colbert is good, and often great, at poking fun at the conservative blowhards he’s satirizing. I think he sometimes goes too far, particularly when using racial satire, and it’s those jokes in particular that I’m critiquing here, or rather people’s defense of them.

I’ve seen a lot of POC, Asian American and otherwise, come out hard in Colbert’s defense, often while throwing the Asian American activists and others who called him out under the bus. (Yes, we do understand it was satire. Yes, we can take a joke. And yes, we are still offended. All of those things can happen at the same time.) I don’t really understand why so many of us are defending him. Not because people of color are a monolith who are all supposed to think the same things and react the same ways, but because I just don’t get why we’re so invested in  white racial satire.

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What do I mean when I say invested? I mean that you believe that The Colbert Report and white racial satire (on SNL, Chelsea Lately, etc.) are important and/or necessary and that you are willing to defend them.

Whether you like The Colbert Report or not, whether you were offended by that joke or not, the question I’m asking is why anyone—particularly people of color—is invested in The Colbert Report in particular and in white racial satire in general. What is white racial satire doing for us that is so important? Important enough to outright dismiss, at best, and rail against, at worse, people who speak out when they are harmed by it?

If your answer is “free speech” please have a seat and think harder. Free Speech is rarely the reason anyone defends anything with this kind of vigor. Free Speech is the go-to when you’re already behind something someone said and you need an argument for why. My question is why are you behind it to begin with? You can be for free speech and not be invested in white racial satire. Believing that Colbert has a right to say what he wants does not require you to get up in arms when someone is offended by it.

I haven’t gotten any solid answers from POC who defend Colbert about why they are so invested. They either say that they aren’t (while continuing to defend the show) or they say something along the lines of, “he helps POC sometimes.” How he helps POC…well, no one seems to be quite sure. He’s definitely not helping us by hiring us.

Some people have suggested that The Colbert Report is fighting racism…somehow. That by taking on the persona of a conservative a-hole, Colbert is calling attention to how ridiculous they are. Yes. Ok. But calling attention to whom, and for what purpose? The fans who have responded angrily to #CancelColbert have either been liberals who believe they are in on the joke already or tweeting lunatics who seem to just get pleasure from hearing and hurling racial slurs. Where are these theoretical people who were racist until they watched Colbert, or SNL, or Chelsea Lately, or any other show that uses white racial satire, and had their racist minds changed? Do we really believe these people exist? Do we really believe there were hella people watching Colbert’s skit about Dan Snyder’s awful foundation who had their minds changed about it as soon as Asian slurs were thrown into the mix?  Do we really think folks who defend that team’s name despite of all the harm it’s caused to Native people are sensitive to the stereotyping of Asian people? You’re telling me these folks exist?

And, you know what, even if they did, why is their “education-in-the-form-of-racist-jokes-that-are-satirical-so-it’s-okay” more important than the people we know for sure exist who are harmed by these jokes?

I reject the idea that we “need” white racial satire. That it’s helping us somehow. That it’s so powerful a tool against oppression that without it we can never end racism. That POC should be grateful for it, because these white people making “ching chong” jokes, in the case of Colbert, and jokes about black men’s penises, in the case of Chelsea Handler, are on our side and somehow making our lives better with their humor. That’s some especially convoluted white savior nonsense. And really, if the white savior narrative had any validity at all (which it doesn’t), it wouldn’t have it in the form of Chelsea Handler, ok?

Consider for a moment, folks, that The Colbert Report isn’t the best we can hope for. That it isn’t the best we can do. That we don’t need it. And that it’s white supremacy (with a heaping helping of patriarchy and male privilege) that tries to convince us otherwise, that tells us that anything white people do to us is okay, as long as they say they’re helping.

If folks put a fifth of the energy they are spending defending Colbert into calling and emailing Dan Snyder and company to demand they change the name of the Washington team in support of Native people, that would be the subject of a dozen major news outlet’s stories instead of this. If people put that same energy into supporting POC comedians like W. Kamau Bell, Hari Kondabolu, Gloria Bigelow, Pia Glenn, and so many others to control our own narratives, TV would already look a lot different than it does.

We don’t need white racial satire. Let’s invest in something else.

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Mia McKenzie is an award-winning writer and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous.