The Line Between Racism and Comedy

In the television show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the main characters are all white and do not have a very firm grasp on how to behave around people of other races. The first episode of the first season is titled “The Gang Gets Racist” and the group gets a chance to make more money for their bar. The way that they do this is by getting help from a friend to promote their bar. The catch is that the friend is black. In any normal situation, this would not be a problem and things would just carry on like nothing was different. In this situation, the owners of the Irish bar, Paddy’s Pub, are racist without even really knowing it. This episode is an example of how race is projected in our own American culture. In the very first scene as the black friend first walks into the bar, they think that he is a robber or a guy coming to start trouble. If it was a white guy that walked in, they wouldn’t think twice about it, but since he was black they thought that he was going to cause problems.

This is a prime example of how the world that we live in is still a little racist. Even though we have made great steps toward a more equal future, the producers of the show can still make jokes like this and it is relevant. This is not to say that all black people start trouble, but more on the fact that they were able to make this joke and get a response out of it instead of people not knowing what they were talking about. The world that we live in is nowhere near the racism that Fredrick Douglass experienced as his time as a slave, but unfortunately it still has a place in society.