Racism with an alibi – Pride Magazine

He is back –Ali G 

 Racism with an alibi

We are told Ali G mocks a white man who wants to be Black. Yet when the joke relies upon every lazy stereotype ever aimed at Black people, perhaps it is time to stop pretending the satire is cleverer than it looks.

Sacha Baron Cohen has brought Ali G back. Apparently, fake dreadlocks, mangled patois and jokes about sex and cannabis were simply waiting for their cultural moment to come around again.

The defence of Ali G has always sounded rather more sophisticated than the character itself. Ali G, we are told, is not mocking Black people. He is mocking a privileged white man from Staines who thinks he is Black.

Ah, Staines. The magical place where a racial stereotype apparently becomes harmless satire.

For caricature to be clever, the community being portrayed should be able to recognise something authentic within it, even if that truth has been stretched to comic extremes. The best comedy holds up a distorted mirror. We laugh because, beneath the exaggeration, we can see ourselves.

Ali G does not hold up a mirror to Black Britain. He holds up a poster designed by somebody who has never met us.

Black men are reduced to being stupid, lazy, sexually insatiable, permanently stoned and barely able to construct a sentence. What truth is being exaggerated here? This is not affectionate observation taken to absurdity. It is a collection of stereotypes in which any racist could settle down, put their feet up and feel thoroughly at home.

We understand that Ali G is supposedly imitating Blackness. But if the joke requires the audience to accept that this is what Blackness looks like, then Black people remain the raw material for the laughter. Putting a white man inside the caricature does not disinfect it.

Blackface without the face paint is not necessarily progress.

It is also…