Our Voices: Netflix really is a joke

By: Kenny Hardin
Garland Journal
https://garlandjournal.com

I miss Dean Martin. Yes that boozy baritone from 60’s and 70’s Rat Pack fame.

I miss him because I enjoyed his celebrity roasts that can now be found on YouTube or Tik Tok more than this drivel being churned out on Comedy Central and Netflix.

I’ve always prided myself on never being shocked or surprised by anything this lack of humanity we’re forced to live through today, but I can be disgusted.

Just when I thought I had reached my personal  pinnacle goal of disgust with our current level of politics, Netflix said on Mother’s Day to hold my beer. They patted themselves on the back during the opening to the Celebrity Roast of Kevin Hart by acknowledging  the content would be racist in tone.

Against my better judgement, I tuned in anyway mainly because video clips continuously popped up on my social media news feed.

I’m not new to racial hate cloaked in comedic intent or thinly veiled as a 1^st Amendment right. I can recall the first time I was called a Ni**er was at 10 years old during the same year this country was celebrating its Bicentennial.

Although I was still an innocent, less than socially conscious and aware  child, I felt no national pride in being relegated to less than while the man uttering the slur probably lit sparklers and sang Yankee Doodle Dandy later that evening.

It would not be the last time I would be put in an uncomfortable position to  evaluate my place in society based on someone else’s misguided arrogance. Back in the early 2000’s working as a Director hospital in N.C., I routinely had racist cartoons taped to my office door or slid underneath.

You learn to internalize it and not complain because speaking up in the corporate world means you will be labeled difficult, divisive, not a team player and ultimately unemployed.

When I served as a City Councilman in my hometown from 2015-2017, I was reminded several times that I needed to learn my place and was once publicly shamed in a meeting as saying I didn’t understand the political game because I was new to it.

Yeah that was code for calling into question my intellect and capabilities so as not to have equal footing as those who didn’t look like me. I’ve even been subjected to hate inspired remarks and behavior at my current veterans nonprofit too with some less melanin holding folks saying they won’t support it because it’s Black owned and the patronage “is too dark.”

So, with my history of persevering through the murky swamps of hatred, I find racial humor unfunny. The Netflix folks thought that having a Black band, The Roots, playing 70’s throwback soul music interludes somehow excused the hate and legitimized the racist tone.

It didn’t. The nearly three hour run time was filled with abhorrent jokes targeting the physically disabled, intellectually challenged, lynching, misogyny, sexual violence, 9/11, women with weight issues, suicide and a particularly sad attempt at humor about George Floyd not being able to breathe.

There may have been more, but I fast forwarded at times to try and speed up the emotional pain I was self-inflicting.

 The late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known to the world as Malcolm X, said in a 1962 speech  “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.”

It was difficult listening to one comedian after another debase the Black women on the dais and see how they took it in stride and laughed heartily right along.

My integrity isn’t motivated by money or materialism but it was obvious many of the new Uncle Clarence Thomas (formerly Uncle Tom) that participated were.

I was saddened that modern day Negropeans like Kevin Hart, NBA star Draymond Green and other men of color in attendance allowed this to continue unchallenged. Again, disgusted.

We’ve become so callous and insensitive as a society. Some of us have even tried to turn the term “woke” into a negative slight. It’s thrown around now to justify a lack of humanity and basic dignity and respect for our fellow man.

If it satisfies your fragile to call me woke and justifies your hate, then please do. I will always choose kindness and show dignity and respect for people who don’t look, think or behave like me.

There’s nothing funny about that.

Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin lives in NC and is an alumni  member of the National Association of Black Journalists