Asian-American author Cathy Park Hong talks in great length about African-American comedian Richard Pryor in the second chapter of her book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. She praises him a lot and makes him the center of her disjointed essay (that's not an insult; that's how the chapters are structured). She talks a lot about racism in the United States- some good points, but mostly vague and lost points that don't go anywhere. So far, none of the good points I can recall are hers but are borrowed from other, better authors.
For whatever reason, she includes a misogynistic joke of Pryor's and paints it as profound, self-reflective, and clever. Bolded parts mine:
Carpio argues that Pryor was the first comedian to expose private black humor to a white audience. Many African Americans echo her observation, remarking on the "shock of recognition" when they first heard Pryor. They probably felt that shock of recognition because he's nobody's spokesman. Onstage, Pryor is fearful, belligerent, hysterical, and boasts about his self-destruction. Not only that, Pryor pries open the deep historical taboos of miscegenation by flaunting his desire for white women. In his comparisons between white female lovers and black female lovers, for instance, Pryor toes the line between enabling and destabilizing stereotypes:
'There really is a difference between white women and black women. I've dated both... Black women, you be suckin' on their pussy and they be like, 'Wait, n----, shit. A little more to the left, motherfucker. You gonna suck the motherfucker, get down." You can fuck white women and if they don't come they say, "It's all right, I'll just lay here and use a vibrator."
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Where do I, as a Korean American woman, situate myself when Pryor sets up these black/white binaries? One minute I'm laughing at white people, and feeling the rage of black oppression as if it's my own, until the next bit, when I realize I'm allied with white people. I become more uncomfortable when Pryor goes deep into the sexual differences between white women and black women. Did I laugh because I am neither black nor white, thereby escaping the sting of being caricatured and objectified? Should I be offended on behalf of white women or black women?
Pryor's monologue perpetuates the sexist stereotypes that black women are aggressive and manly as opposed to white women, who are passive and ultra-feminine. Meanwhile, Pryor sets himself up as the prized virile black male. And yet, this trope also belies a dynamic that's a bit more complicated, in that Pryor reserves a secret admiration for black women because they don't put up with his bullshit, while tacitly acknowledging that the passivity of white women is not due to hyper-femininity but, as Hilton Als writes, white guilt. In the end, Pryor makes himself the object of derision, admitting that he has a hard time satisfying any woman, black or white. Just at the point where I abruptly stop laughing and think, This is-- Pryor unzips the muscle suit of black male machismo to expose his own shame.
This is it.
Cathy Park Hong was so deadset on praising this man that it wasn't enough to ignore this joke. No, she had to rewrite this joke of a black man generalizing and insulting black women for being confident in favor of generalizing and praising white women for being docile into a joke about a black man making fun of himself. Richard Pryor is NOT making fun of himself. He is making a mockery of both black and white women and he is on neither one's side because they are both women. "Secret admiration"... give me a fucking break.
Cathy Park Hong is so anti-white and pro-woke that she HAD to make sense of this misogynistic joke in order to relate to a non-white individual by writing the misogyny out of it entirely. Why? Because she thinks this misogynistic joke is supposed to make her favor white women? She literally misses the whole point of the joke because she's too caught up with refusing to entertain the idea that she might have an easier time finding solidarity with white WOMEN than with a black MAN.
I see this so much in woke spaces and discussions. White women are stomped on in the name of racial solidarity (WHICH NON-WHITE MEN DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT), all the while Father Patriarchy sits on his comfortable throne and laughs at women falling for the same traps over and fucking over again.
Its like her brain short-circuited the moment the time came to criticize a Black man for anything. She was upset that Black women were objectified. But she was not prepared to admit that this Black man also objectified White women. So she just spouted word vomit to justify his misogyny.
This is what happens when you care more about belonging to the correct political team than you do about thinking for yourself