Mike Birbiglia Quotes

From 'Chappelle's Show' to 'Tosh.0,' there's so much race comedy. It's overdone.

Your not black enough. If you are black, all you have to do is wear a dashiki and pump your fist, and you’ll get all the money you want.

You know how Mexican restaurants always have "border" in the name: Border Grill, Border Cafe. You wouldn't do that to black people: Kunta's Kitchen or Shackles. They don't do it to white people. You don't see the Honkey Grill, the Cracker Barrel... oh, nevermind.

We are now the proud owners of a white boy. Now we have to shop in the caucasian isle and get sunscreen, mayonaise and mild salsa because the other ones really hawt!

We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them 'graham crackers.'

I think one of my first jokes - in the black community, there's people who have jokes about skin tone. People like, 'You so black, you purple.' 'You so black, you gotta smile so we can see you at night.'

I know how to be funny to black audiences.

Racial discourses and theories are socially constructed ... but repudiating race theory does not make it disappear in politics. Race matters ... because it functions as a marker and an anchor to establish and repudiate identity, status and position ... Races exist because racism exists.

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.

If you are a black athlete, celebrity or media personality living, socializing, working, studying or dating in the white community, the easiest way to stop Twitter trolls from spamming your social media with accusations of race betrayal is to celebrate BLM. If you’re an educated, nerdy, proper-speaking black person who has been chastised for “acting white” by your black peers, supporting BLM salvages your black image.

There's a difference between racism and people making a joke about something. There is true racism going on, and people should be able to identify what that is, comparatively.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

What we're trying to do is take these words and soften them. I'm an African-American comic. I use the b-word in my act.

I write a lot about race precisely because I don't believe it's real.

Race makes things funny. A black guy driving in NASCAR: not funny. A black guy driving a car sponsored by Tide: not funny. A black guy driving a car sponsored by Aunt Jemima: hilarious.

For the multiculturist/diversity crowd, culture, ideas, customs, arts and skills are a matter of racial membership where one has no more control over his culture than his race. That's a racist idea, but it's politically correct racism. It says that one's convictions, character and values are not determined by personal judgment and choices but genetically determined. In other words, as yesteryear's racists held: race determines identity.

Have you heard his new song? 'Cause he thinks he's a black man now.

I thought my teeth were white until I washed my face with Noxzema. My teeth are off-white. I'm not even white. I'm off-white. It's a new race; we will prevail!

Saw myself naked in front of a mirror a couple days ago - that's not the joke, that's what we called the setup. I saw myself naked, and I said, 'Holy cow, I'm 'The White Man.' I've heard a lot of bad things about you, cracka.

I got jury duty and I didn't want to go, so my friend said, "You should write something really really racist on the form when you return it. Like, you should put 'I hate chinks'." And I said, "I'm not going to put that on there just to get out of jury duty. I don't want people to think that about me." So instead I wrote, "I love chinks." And who doesn't?

Even the notion that, you know,[Bill] Clinton was the black president strikes me as the greatest irony of all times.

He comes back with the script, and it's racist like a 1940's Newspaper.

I’m not playing the race card. I’m playing the rice card.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

That's the nature of my [stand-up] act: black man with a white baby.