Student

Professor Padget

ENGL 101

9/29/18

How Comedians Make Sensitive Topics Funny: Tom Segura’s Take on Racism

Racism. A word that when people hear nowadays, it bring millions of thoughts into their heads.

With things these days like the KKK, police brutality, and more than a dozen different events

and organizations/groups associated with the word racism, it has become a very sensitive topic to

speak about in the past few years. The topic of racism is so controversial and fought over that

nobody would ever think that someone would have the audacity and stupidity to address it with

comedy and humor. However, there are plenty if comedians that use this topic as a focal point of

some if their jokes. One of these comedians is Tom Segura. Tom Segura is an American

comedian from southern California who has just recently become a bigger name in the comedy

world. In one of Tom’s specials, “Mostly Stories”, Tom takes the topic of racism to a new level

with one of his jokes called, “Racist Asians”. Tom Segura only makes these jokes seem funny

due to his tone of voice and his actual method of telling the joke, even though this is a very

sensitive topic to so many people.

Tom starts off with the grouping of jokes that I call “Racist Asians” by talking about how

“all races are racist, but we’re the best at it”(53:32). When Tom uses the word “we’re” his

referring to white people as a whole. This seemed very peculiar to me considering all of the

negative stigma and stereotypes surrounding white people being racist. Tom saying this is almost

blatantly stating that white people are in fact, racist. Tom isn’t exactly wrong when saying this,
because there are some white people that are racist, but that is only really a handful, not the

entire population. Even though Tom makes this statement that would usually be seen as very

offensive, the entire audience, and myself included, burst into an uproar of laughter due to the

joke he had just made. Most would see this joke as ethically and morally wrong, not to mention

distasteful, yet, people still laughed. The only way Tom makes this joke seem funny is by

essentially making fun of himself and also the fact that there are so many issues in the world

surrounding white supremacy and race issues involving white people. So when the audience

hears this joke, they understand all that has happened surrounding white racism in 2018 and past

years, therefore making the joke funny because of how Tom is making fun of it all.

Tom begins the next part of the joke with him saying that another “super racist” group of

people are Asians, and that Asian people are most racist to other Asian people, which is very

ironic, considering they’re a part of the same race. The audience begins to laugh and an audience

member (who is Asian) starts to nod his head in agreement. Tom takes notice of this and begins

to talk to the audience member. I found this interesting because most comedians don’t talk to

their audience whenever they perform, but Tom was starting to bring this man to his (Tom’s)

ethical level, which an example of using ethos in comedy. Tom proceeds to talk about the topic

and introduces what he calls the “Asian hierarchy system” (53:40). Tom says the hierarchy starts

at the top with the Japanese, and then it goes to the Chinese and the Koreans, and then at the

bottom are Vietnamese and Filipino people, or “tan” people as he called them. Tom proceeds to

pretend and spit on this bottom group as if he is one of the higher ranked groups in his system.

This action was very offensive and would probably been seen as offensive to most people, but

the entire audience laughed anyways, and I found myself laughing as well. This is probably due

to the almost yell Tom makes when he performs this action, which was quite funny.
 After Tom’s previous statement about the “system”, he then asks the same audience

member from before if he is correct about the ordering of the system. The audience member

responds and says that what Tom was saying was correct. Tom then asks the entire audience if

they “feel better now” (54:16). Tom most likely was asking this to act as a sort of diffuser for

anyone who was feeling offended and upset about Tom’s previous joke about the “system”. This

is most likely because Tom had received reassurance and approval from an Asian audience

member. Since the audience member agreed with him, Tom probably felt as though he was

excused from seeming racist because his “system” he created had now been confirmed by a

person who is a part of this Asian superiority theory he had created. After Tom asked the

audience if they did feel better, the audience proceeds to laugh. This is most likely due to Tom’s

tone of voice when he asks them this question. This is due to the fact that whenever Tom asks

this he sounds like he is somewhat babying the audience, as his voice becomes somewhat softer

and higher pitched. This tone of voice most likely makes the audience laugh because it is

somewhat a form of mockery. This is because it seems like Tom really does not care what the

audience really thinks is okay or not and so he is sort of mocking them because he is dismissing

all thoughts of people thinking he is actually racist. The part of this but is also funny because

people are probably laughing at the fact that an Asian person is admitting to the fact that they

have made racist comments and remarks about other Asian’s, and therefore being a part of

Tom’s system.

Tom keeps speaking with the same audience member and asks him who his family

“talked the most shit about” (55:00). The audience member then responded and said that his

family would mostly talk about Japanese people. Whenever the audience member says this

though, Tom does not seem surprised. He just looks at the audience and sort of raises his arms in
the air, almost like he is saying “I told you so” with his body language and movements. Tom

does this because he had learned that the audience member’s family is Chinese, and in Tom’s

“system” Chinese people are placed below Japanese people. Tom then asks what the audience

member’s family would say. The audience member says that his parents wanted him to marry a

Japanese woman. This was due to the fact that his parents wanted him to be able to tell her what

to do, therefore making it like he was better than her. Tom asks if the audience member’s family

was Saudi instead of Chinese. Tom asks this because in Saudi tradition the women are always

supposed to do what their husbands tell them to do and have less rights than men. This remark

makes the whole audience laugh, and so did I. This is most likely due to Tom’s tone of voice

when asking the question, which was one of surprise and extreme questioning almost the fact

that the middle east is a very controversial area in today’s society, and Tom is basically just

making fun of it. This tone of voice caused the audience to laugh because of how surprised Tom

seems when asking this and hearing the reasoning in the first place.

Racism is nothing to joke about and it shouldn’t be found funny or comedic in any way.

However, Tom Segura finds a way to work humor and mockery into this very sensitive topic and

therefore makes the audience laugh at this sensitive and touchy topic, when it should be taken

very seriously. Sure some people may not find this to be funny, but I found this special to be

hilarious. I found myself laughing about things that I would have never even thought about

laughing over. With Tom’s mixture of sarcasm, mockery, and seeming carelessness, he inflicts

an entire feeling of laughter and comedy into his audience. I know that racism isn’t funny in a

regular, every day environment, but when it is approached and introduced in the way that Tom

Segura does, I don’t think anybody would be able to help themselves from laughing, even if the

topic is not meant to be funny. Tom Segura is just a funny who knows how to work an audience
with his words, tone of voice, and jokes showing that all people are the same at their core in a

very odd way, and almost merciless of controversial topics in his jokes.

Works Cited

Karas, Jay and Rami Hachache, directors. Tom Segura: Mostly Stories. Netflix, 2016.