“I didn’t come here to tell jokes at a funeral,” Hari Kondabolu told the sold-out crowd at The Wilbur right off the bat last Saturday night. “We’re going to laugh and we’re going to get through this together.” It was a cathartic, healing, unifying, and hilarious night of comedy. We don’t usually talk about things other than music on this site, but this is an unusual time.
This is a time when I told my daughter about the results of the presidential election, the very first question she asked, shaken with concern, was if the paraprofessional in her classroom, who is muslim and wears a hijab, would be made to leave the country. This is a time when more hate crimes have been reported in the days following the election than following 9/11. And while it may seem like this is not the time to go to a comedy show, given these horrific circumstances, if you know Hari’s work then you know that it is exactly the right thing.
Hari is often described as a “political” comic, a term that he has said is frustrating. He is an observational comic, but because many of his observations are about things that make people with power and privilege (like white dudes) uncomfortable, he is called political. When asked why he talks about race so consistently, Hari says, “Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I’m drowning.” The people who tell Hari he is “obsessed with race” are mostly white people. And it’s not hard to understand why there is this disconnect, as a 2009 study showed that 75% of white people do not have a single non-white friend. But being unaware doesn’t make you right.
On Saturday, the crowd reflected the country in its diversity and it felt like a rollercoaster of emotions we were riding together, like an enacting what many of us experienced this week: going about our normal lives and routines and then suddenly remembering that Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. Hari would sigh and bring us all back to that fact and somehow find the humor. Over the course of the set, Hari not only pointed out the terrible circumstances of sexism and misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and homophobia, but also took them apart piece by piece. For instance, the phrase “boys will be boys,” which has been used to excuse so much disgraceful behavior and language recently: “When,” Hari asks, “has that phrase ever been preceded by something good?”
If you don’t know Hari’s work, you should. There’s probably no better place to start than his brilliant bit about the year 2042, when, according to census figures, white Americans will be 49% of the population. It can be easy to hear that statistic and parrot what news networks have said, that white people will be the minority. But Hari breaks it down and demonstrates so clearly why, “[r]ace is the child of racism, not the father,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in Between The World And Me.
Be well out there, people. Don’t forget to sing, march, shout, write, call, organize, and, yes, laugh. This isn’t over.
You can get Hari’s latest album, Mainstream American Comic, here and you should also listen to his podcast with W. Kamau Bell, Politically Re-Active.