African American Humor Quotes

I've been watching the 'Richard Pryor Show' for NBC made during the '70s. I'm a big fan of his work.

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.

I know how to be funny to black audiences.

For a lot of comics who aren't as silly or physical but more intellectual, we get looked at as 'alt comics.' No, I'm still a black comic, and there are black people who want to hear my type of black comedy, but that space hasn't been built out for us.

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.'

'Smart Funny & Black' came about because I felt that black comedians were being considered as only capable of a certain type of comedy - sort of physical, kind of silly - and I felt like we are not a monolith, and our comedy isn't, either.

When you ask people who their favorite comedian is or favorite African-American comedian, people generally say Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, or Richard Pryor. Redd Foxx gets left out a lot.

I personally don't feel any pressure to make jokes about multiple baby-fathers and stereotypical black jokes, because one, that's just not my life, and two, I wouldn't even sound right talking about those things.

What makes 'Pootie Tang' the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it's a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner.

The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical.

An interesting difference between African-American humor and Jewish humor, in it's kind of basic or maybe most austere type form is, African-American humor, some of it comes out of playing the dozens in which you insult the other person or insult the other person's mother, and so much of Jewish humor is like, you're insulting yourself. It's totally self-deprecating.

It used to be that the black comic figure had to have this bravado and always showed strength.

When I came to America, it was Dave Chappelle and a lot of comedians on ComicView. That was my first exposure to stand up comedy, actually.