"Well, just, hell, we're all American.

"Can't we just be all Americans?"

Yeah, we are.

We all Americans,

but we live in two different Americas.

That's what it is.

People forget that.

And I don't think everybody

that doesn't understand what we go through

is necessarily racist or bigoted.

That's a far jump.

There's a lot of folks that just straight up don't know

what it's like, and you gotta educate them.

You gotta educate them

on the kind of America you live in.

I go to Best Buy and give a dude some straightening.

(audience laughs)

Straighten his ass out, yeah.

I'm straightening.

Dude at Best Buy gonna decide

I don't need a bag with my purchase.

(audience laughs)

"You just have an iPhone case.

"I figure you can just pop that open and..."

No, I ain't popping shit.

You put it in the bag.

(audience laughs)

I need that in a bag.

"What do you need a bag for?

"I don't understand why you need a bag.

"It's wasteful.

"Recycle.

"Don't you care about the earth?"

I go, "Sir, this has nothing to do with the earth.

"I'm a Black man in America,

"I gotta leave this store with a bag, bruh."

(audience applauding)

It's about safety.

I'm Black.

I don't get the luxury of just walking out

with shit in my hand.

That is a roll of the dice.

That is a horrifying day.

No, not only do I need the bag, bitch,

I need that receipt.

(audience cheering)

And staple it to the outside.

I don't want a receipt in my hand.

You staple my receipt to the outside

like Chinese carry out

and I hold it up in the air.

I "Lion King."

I hakuna matata an iPhone case out of Best buy.

For me, in my standup,

if I haven't made you uncomfortable

somewhere in there then I don't think I've done my job.

And I'm not there to make you squirm and feel,

but this is gonna be a real conversation

about stuff that's happening in the world.

Now, there might be a couple goofy ass jokes

somewhere in that performance,

but somewhere in there there needs to be something

that speaks to an honest observation about the world.

And I don't think every comedian sets out

to change the world, and politics, and Blackness,

but even if it's just about relationships

it's still your truth.

You've experienced something

and you're reporting it back to the people.

And to me, that is the type of comedy

that will always fly the furthest and the highest

is comedy that is a reflection of the human condition.

(smooth jazz music)

- The role of Black comedy

with what's happening in the world today

is no different than the role of Black comedy

from the beginning.

It's all about telling the real story from our perspective.

What better place to be able to tell your story

than on a stand up stage with freedom of speech

and letting it just go?

- As a comic, I've been there before

where I needed to go to the club.

So if something crazy happened in the news

where I was like, "Yo, I don't know how to deal with this,"

for me, right away I'm going to the comedy club.

And I don't care if it's just for me to do a set

or if I'm coming there just to watch

some other cats do they thing,

because I need the laugh.

- Redd Foxx said it to Malcolm X.

You gotta do something to get people excited and engaged,

and a sense of humor is the best thing

that everybody can meet at one place.

You can laugh people into some truth,

and you can hit them with some reality

of what's gong on in the world.

- Sometimes I like to have fun and it's all fun shit,

and sometimes it's like, "You know what?

"This is the fucked up shit that's going on in the world."

And a lot of times when you're a Black comic

and you're...

And I'm mainstream comedy,

sometimes white people don't wanna hear that shit, you know?

Or they tune in when it feels comfortable for them.

- Comedy, especially in the Black community,

truth to power.

I always said we the third eye.

We right below the pastor.

There's Jesus, it's your clergy, then it's comedians.

- I'm not preaching.

I'm a stand up comic.

My first priority is to entertain you.

If I'm making you laugh

and I'm educating you at the same time, brilliant.

So I talk about police brutality in my set,

but I do it in a way you don't even realize

I'm talking about police brutality,

and then you go, "Oh shit."

I don't care about Starbucks banning wifi for porn.

That doesn't interest me.

That's for white dudes.

(audience laughs)

You know it's white dudes.

Black guys get arrested just for not buying coffee.

Can you imagine if they got their dicks out?

(audience laughs)

"I shot the penis!

"The penis was resisting!"

(audience laughs)

- We have always, from the Richard Pryors

to the Dick Gregory, God rest his soul,

made society see what they was doing to us in a comical way.

And laugh about it to keep from crying about it

or be invalid about it.

So, I take that on.

I take on that responsibility very serious.

I have to talk to my people and say,

"Yeah, this happened to me too."

- I hate to see any baseball player having trouble.

That's a great sport for my people.

That is the only sport in the world

where a negro can shake a stick at a white man

and won't start no riot.

(audience laughs)

- Dick Gregory represented us

not just as a stand up comedian,

but as a civil rights activist.

Dick Gregory spoke when I was a freshman in college.

The way he schooled me, Medgar Evers schooled him,

and it was all about doing the right thing for all, not one.

- [Dick] Great men have said before

that a soldier can fight for his country

against another country,

but it takes something like a super special man

to fight his country when it is wrong.

- If you're a Black entertainer and you talk about race,

you're gonna take a hit.

Like, it's just natural,

because there's always gonna be backlash.

Same thing with, like, Kaepernick.

Like, white people don't want to see you

talking about the issues, they just wanna laugh.

You're just a comedian, just stick to your day job.

I felt more connected to artists that use their platform,

especially if you get the opportunity

to be in white rooms, on white television,

in front of white people,

especially white people that generally don't see you,

you should be talking about the issues,

but at the same time you need to stay funny.

And I think that's what separates a great like Dick Gregory

is he was able to political and still funny,

because at the end of the day people wanna laugh.

- You can always laugh at problems that's right.

Everyone in the whole world knows this is wrong,

so then you can make humor out of this

in a manner like you're enlightening people

on just what's going on.

- It's, like, one of the last bastions of free speech

that we have is through comedy.

You know, we used to have the last poets.

You know, Nikki Giovanni.

We don't have poets anymore that are famous,

poets that can speak for us, you know?

"This revolution will not be televised," and all that.

We don't have anybody to hold our fists up.

The only people we have left is comics.

We won't be censored, we don't give a shit.

La Wanda Page had a lot to say that people don't realize.

Marsha Warfield.

- I really like watching the news though,

'cause on the news they have their own language.

It's almost like they're talking in code.

See, they even have a code word

for Black people on the news.

It's "youth."

"A 35 year old Detroit youth

(audience laughs)

"was today shot and killed by a 14 year old Utah man."

(audience laughs)

(audience clapping)

Think about it, think about it.

- Something that comes readily to mind,

the cover of "Bicentennial N*****"

has Pryor in a chain of different Pryors, right?

In different forms.

He's a boxer, he's a preacher, he's a business man.

And the figure holding the chain is Uncle Sam to the corner.

And so, that in itself physically back in the day

when album covers were also part of the humor,

it's already performing a definite critique

of the celebration of America in this "Bicentennial"

and the persistence of enslavement

in different forms in 1976.

- Richard Pryor is easily the best to ever do it.

Richard Pryor had a line,

"You go to jail looking for justice

"and all you find is just us."

No white person can absorb that

the same as a Black person.

Like, a Black person is like, "Yes, thank you for saying...

"Exactly."

It's a moment of truth for Black people

and it's a moment of realization for white people

who are getting for a the first time,

a lot of them for the first time,

to see the world through a Black man's eyes.

- Police got a choke hold they use out here though, man.

They choke n****s to death.

That mean you be dead when they through.

Did you know that?

Wait, the n****s going, "Yeah, we knew."

The white folk, "No, I had no idea."

Yeah, two grab your legs, one grab your head.

Snap.

"Oh, shit, he broke.

(audience laughs)

"Can you break a n*****?

"Is it okay?

"Let's check the memo.

"Yep, page eight, you can break a n*****, right there.

"See?

"Let's drag him downtown.

"Okay."

- It's the window into Black life,

Black opinions, Black thoughts.

You know, you look at somebody like Chris Rock

and some of the brilliant shit he said.

White people wouldn't even understand some of this shit,

at least politically, if he didn't say it.

(Lil Rel laughs)

- The white man thinks he's losing the country.

"Affirmative action, and illegal aliens,

"and we're fucking losing the country."

Losing?

Shut the fuck up.

White people ain't losing shit.