It's a rainy Sunday here in Toronto, so it's an ideal opportunity to finish articles, including one I'll be posting either tonight or tomorrow morning about the Toronto Just For Laughs Festival, happening this week. A counterpart to the insanely popular comedy festival in Montreal, JFL is hosting a whack of great stand up comedians and sketch artists, including Jason Alexander, Shaun Majumder, The Williamson Playboys, The Sketchersons, and many more. I'll be writing about an event billed as "An All-Star Ethnic Comedy Show", featuring Sugar Sammy, Jo Koy, Joe Derosa, KT Tatara, and many more fantastic comedians, who, uh, I guess could be called "ethnic" (read: not white). It's a label neither seemed particularly comfortable with when I spoke with them, and that I, myself, am quite surprised JFL is using.

The evening is being taped for CBC Television, hosted by CBC's most well-known poster boy for ethnicity, George Stroumboulopoulos (apparently, being a mix of Egyptian, Greek, and Ukrainian counts as "ethnic", not... um, just plain Canadian). "Ethnic" is the term my relatives in Thunder Bay freely use; it reminds me of the jokes Sammy tells about his own visits to the northern city.
Nothing against Northerners, but let's just say races that aren't white or aboriginal are still considered exotic in some places. The label "ethnic" connotes something other, something different, and something ultimately separate. Neither Jo, Sammy, nor any of the comedians on Wednesday night's bill could be considered in any way "apart" from other comedic counterparts; as Jo says, funny is funny. Would Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Russell Peters, or indeed, the great Richard Pryor fall under the "ethnic" category? No? Well, they're not white, right? Sure, these comics use race and race relations as the basis for much of their material -but they're really revealing deeper truths about a part of society most of us don't want to look at too long. Smiling at the truth might be the only way to effect change. Labels like "ethnic" underline separation and distance, not create the sort of shared communal experience that's brought about through the work of these remarkable people: laughter.

I'm sure it's a convenient CBC / mainstream television mindset that's brought about the use of the word "ethnic" to describe the bill of talented comedians that'll be onstage this week. Let's not freak out our audience, goes the thinking, let's let them know what this is upfront. I can hear TV execs' mindspeak now: "Orange chicken jokes? Ethnic. Arranged marriage jokes? Ethnic. KKK Jokes? Ethnic." Pardon me, viewers aren't stupid. Who cares what colour the person is delivering the jokes, or, as Majumder calls it, the sugar-coated truth? Funny is funny. Damn straight.

(Oh, and while we're at it, who cares whether the singer is English-speaking, white, or gay? Music is music. The link to my formal review of Rachid Taha is here; the link to my formal review of George Michael is here. Each awesome shows, each awesome performers.)