Excerpt: 'Black Is The New White'

December 8, 20092:22 PM ET

Paul Mooney

Note: There is language in this excerpt that some readers may find offensive.

Chapter 36

Harlem is haunted. I ain't talking about no Harlem Renaissance shit, Langston Hughes and W. E. B. DuBois and all those black-history-month folks. I always tell kids if they ever want to do a real report for black-history month, they should hand in a paper on Jesus. Write about Jesus Christ.

He's black.

But Harlem is haunted because ever since Richard's death, every place in the world is haunted for me. I know Richard starts his career here in New York City, down in the clubs of the Village. He kicks off his comeback after Berkeley at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. So I am walking the streets, minding my own business, and suddenly a thought of Richard blindsides me. It can happen any time at all.

I'm in a Harlem McDonald's, subway coming aboveground right here and shaking its rattletrap ass over my head, and I sit listening to a short crazy dude sound off. All I can think of is Richard, hearing this tight little African leprechaun (an Africaun?) rant and rave in a strange, high-pitched nuts-in-a-vise voice. The dude rants to everybody in the Harlem McDonald's, but he's not speaking to anybody in particular. He's talking to thin air.

"I beat you and I hit you," this little Africaun says. "You think I'm small, but I can do it. Come at me, let me see you bring it. I win, because you know why? I may have small hands, but I got God in my hand, right here. God is in my hands. You don't know? I used to be a great opera singer."

I say, laughing, "Oh, little man, I wish my friend Richard were around."

If Richard were alive now, I'd write him such a great character. I'd give the little Africaun to him and he'd make a million dollars out of doing the character of the little dude with a big-assed rant. I can see it like it is happening right in front of me. I can see Richard doing him. I miss Richard. Mr. Mooney. I miss him calling me that.

Mostly when I think about Richard, I think about keeping it real. I think about never losing my voice, never giving in, never selling out, always keeping black, always sticking to the street. Staying neighborhood and not Hollywood.

I mean, I've been doing what I do for a long time. I've made millions of dollars at it. I've always worked, throughout the course of five decades now. Not many comedians can say that.

Stop a random black person in the street and ask if the name "Paul Mooney" rings a bell. Now stop a random white person. Two different realities. Maybe that's what we're talking about.

I'm unheard-of by white people. I'm stealth for white people. I'm silent to white people.

So after a half century doing comedy, I'm some sort of secret? I'm the real unknown comic, not that Canadian who used to appear with a paper bag over his head on The Gong Show. What's his name? Murray Langston. Somebody put a bag over my reputation. I'm known for being unknown.

Or maybe I'm unknowable.

Or maybe some people just don't want to know me.

All my life, I witness reactions to my presence that seem to veer crazily from fascination to denial. Love-hate. But Mama bestows upon me the greatest gift: an absolute bedrock belief in myself. I'm the ugly duckling who right from the start always knows he's a swan. So the people who want me to be a duck just seem silly to me.

"You're different," Mama tells me. "You've got the light shining from within you."

So it's that light, that God-given light, that makes people respond to me in such strange ways.

What I'm wanting to do with this book-joint thing is give you a glimpse behind the curtain. I'm the one operating the special effects and the fireworks and the light show to make the Great and Powerful Oz great and powerful. That's who I am.

Mama's supreme gift means I'm untouchable. Her unconditional love makes me bulletproof. "You are better than anyone," Mama whispers to me. "You don't have to bow and scrape."

So I'm not slowed down or changed by any of the bullshit thrown at me. I always have the same reaction: I just think it's strange.

I'm trying to come up with a comparison. Say there's a single surviving dragon, the last one in all existence. People are fascinated by it, but they're terrified, too. You can imagine all the excited chatter.

"There's only one left?"

"Are you sure?"

"Omigod, I'm glad there's only one left."

Then the dragon wakes up and spits out a few fiery words, and the people are shocked and even more fascinated and terrified.

"You mean it can talk?"

I cannot be any other way than how I am. I can't "tone it down." I can't "be less black." I never worry about whether that person gets me or that person doesn't. I've got the endorsement of the world's funniest man in my hip pocket.

Richard helps me to keep going. Even from the grave, he insists on my keeping it real.

Dr. King says, "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." I am just happy to be of service to the human race, with all my maladjusted creativity in play every day of the week.

The paper for this book is white and the print is black. Are either of those shades even close to the skin colors of white folks and black folks? No. Malcolm has his realization moment, when he looks up white and black in the dictionary and sees that it's all bullshit. White people take the color white for their own when they ain't white, they're shades of pink and red and tan. And they assign black folk the color black, when we ain't black, we're brown and tan and high yellow and russet.

To paraphrase H. Rap Brown, racism is as American as cherry pie. It's the country's original sin — that and the shit the Europeans pull on the Indians, which is part of the same trip. Racism is a thread that runs through history. Everything is stitched with its color.

June 2008–April 2009
Harlem
Los Angeles