Latino and Asian American Stereotypes As Seen in Stand Up Comedy

In a group presentation in class this past Thursday, the focus was stereotypes of Latinos and Asian Americans in media. The group presented the stereotypes inherent in portrayals of both groups. For Latinos, there's assertions of laziness, saucy suggestiveness, and hot temper. For Asians, there's implications that the average Asian is everything from a bad driver to a kung fu master. There's also the issue of lumping dozens of unique nationalities, ethnicities and cultures into umbrella terms like "Hispanic," "Latino," and "Asian." While these terms aren't necessarily inaccurate, they certainly don't encourage a deeper understanding of the diverse cultures that exist within them. The presenting group used the routines of some notable Latino and Asian American stand up comedians to demonstrate the views on stereotypes within those communities. It's this use of comedy as a reflection of real views of the Latino and Asian American communities that I'd like to use the rest of this blog post to focus on.

In class, the Latino comedian used to show Latino views on stereotypes about their race was George Lopez. Mr. Lopez's act is almost entirely based on the fact that he is Latino, and he uses stereotypes and comments on race relations to create comedy. In class, we saw several clips of Lopez, including one of him talking about how Jesus Christ was Latino because he was a "carpenter accused of a crime he did not commit" and "thought his mom was a virgin." Other bits of his comedy routine discuss how everyone who works at fast-food restaurants is Hispanic, and others still imply that Latinos a) are the target of police shooting beanbag guns and b) that these Latinos love eating beans so much that they would take the projectiles home to cook them. It's clear that these play up stereotypes about Latinos, and it would be unacceptable for a comedian of another race to make these jokes in earnest. But just because George Lopez has the right, should he?

Asian American comedians often exploit some of the same kind of stereotypes for jokes. In class, we watched clips from Henry Cho and Margaret Cho, both of whom are ethnically Korean but were born and raised in the United States. Henry discussed the feeling of foreignness and alienation he felt when he visited Korea as a kid and implied that all Asians look alike, and Margaret did an impression of an Asian person that would be extremely offensive if it was done by someone who wasn't Asian. Again, these stand up bits were only acceptable because of the ethnicities of the people performing them. They absolutely should be allowed, but does that mean they should do it?

If they can make it funny, then sure. It's not just Latino and Asian American comics who pay the bills with racial humor about their own race – black comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle fill seats by talking about black-white race relations, and some of Louis C.K.'s funniest bits are about being white. If you can't make it funny, though, it's just lazy comedy, and I think Lopez especially is guilty of this. Still, there's no real danger in lazy comedy. Where I question this kind of comedy is when people start considering stand up comics ambassadors for their race, people whose views on stereotypes and race issues should be considered "how it is" regardless of whether they have any evidence beyond the anecdotal. In a perfect world, people would know the difference between comedy and academia. In real life, however, racist sketches like Jeff Dunham's Achmed the Dead Terrorist inform the worldview of far too many people, and comedians should be careful what kind of message their material gives off.