Wayne Brady: Black Skin, White Mask…. [Saturday #Culture]

Dave Chappelle’s ‘Wayne Brady Sketch’ is one of his most popular, largely because it plays upon the concept of the Black mask in conjunction with the Uncle Tom figure.

Wayne Brady is cast as the embodiment of Uncle Tom, his real persona exaggerated in the set-up to the sketch. Brady is known for his white appeal; he is a ‘safe’ Black, a man who is kind, loving and non-threatening, particularly as he rarely touches upon racial issues. Brady makes white people feel comfortable, unlike Chappelle, whose comedy is directed at confronting racial issues and whites’ history of discrimination and abuse against Blacks.

Brady, after entering the sketch as the Uncle Tom figure, displays a hyperbole of the Black mask, embodying whites’ greatest fear. The sketch opens and almost immediately, Brady transforms from the safe Black to the white caricature. He pulls out a machine gun and fires upon other Blacks, a scene of gang violence common in white perceptions of the ghetto. By becoming part of the ghetto, Brady subverts his obedient nature and becomes the Black criminal that whites fear. He goes on to exemplify traits of the Black criminal with his ‘personal ATM’, in which he acts as pimp and takes prostitutes’ earnings for his own gain. The climax of the sketch, and its most famous line, comes when Brady asks, “Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a bitch?” Brady has fully become an inverse of himself, his actions completely opposite of what whites expect from him.

The idea of the Black mask has been carried forth since slavery. Under slaveholders’ method of paternalism, masters truly believed that they were doing Blacks a favor by enslaving them. Slaves learned to mask their feelings and appear polite to all whites, regardless of inner emotions. Brady displays the Black mask perfectly when he is pulled over by a police officer. After asking for his license, the cop realizes that he has pulled over Wayne Brady. He is star-struck and embarrassed, reinforcing Brady’s Uncle Tom image by stating, “my mother-in-law loves you!” Brady puts on the mask of politeness throughout, taking it to hyperbole when a spotlight shines down and Brady literally performs, singing ‘Say a Little Prayer for You’. The exaggerated Black mask is suddenly swept away as Brady drops his farce and strangles the officer; he acknowledges his performance behind the mask by addressing the audience with, “Thank you! Goodnight!”

Not only does the ‘Wayne Brady Sketch’ display Brady’s transition from Uncle Tom to feared stereotype and the use of the Black mask, but the sketch also investigates Black camaraderie and the concept of representing the race. After Brady performs his first act of subversion through machine gun fire, he turns to Chappelle and says, “Black actors have to stick together,” linking Chappelle to the stereotype Brady has just enforced. Throughout the sketch, Chappelle opposes and is fearful of Brady’s Black criminality. Chappelle is reluctant to take the prostitutes’ money and tells Raquel to run; he tries to escape himself by desperately mouthing ‘help’ at the white police officer. Brady becomes the manifestation of negative Black stereotypes Chappelle cannot discard, as all Blacks are grouped together in the view of society. Brady carries Chappelle on a journey of lawbreaking and chaos, his careless actions becoming Chappelle’s, for despite being only one Black man, Brady simultaneously represents the entire Black race. There is no escape for Chappelle; he wearily repeats ‘Black actors gotta stick together’ before Brady open fires and Chappelle crumples to the ground.

- Devon Bacso, bacsod@kenyon.edu

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