I’m a comedian and joking is my job – that’s the truth about racist jokes | Shazia Mirza

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“I love your handbag! ” I say.

“It was just a book, from the book store,” she said.

“No! I thought everything in the pound cost £ 10.99. You’ve been undercharged, you have to go back and pay the rest!”

This is an exchange I had with an audience member while I was on stage last week. The woman and I didn’t know each other, we laughed a bit, no one was mistreated or assaulted.

This is called the joke. I know what it is because I’m an actor: joking is my job, I do it every night.

When I was a kid my mom and I were riding a crowded train in Birmingham New Street when a white woman got on board, pushed my mom off the train and said, “Get out like you, Paki bastard!” It has been 30 years since this incident and I still feel sad and terrified every time I remember it. I remember the aggressiveness and hatred with which it was said, and the horror of not only the word, but that no one said anything in defense of my mother.

This is not a joke.

When Yorkshire cricketer Gary Ballance stepped out and admitted to using the P-word against teammate Azeem Rafiq, as part of the continuing row highlighting occasional racism in the sport and a national debate on racism in the workplace, the investigative panel said the use of the word was considered a “friendly verbal attack … in the spirit of a friendly joke”.

But I’m not convinced that’s true, even for comedians like me who can joke about whatever they want. If I took the stage in 2021 and referred to someone using the P word or the N word, the audience would turn on me. Either they would go out, tell me to come down, or if they were really polite, write a letter of complaint. They just wouldn’t take it.

I say this, because even when I made jokes about myself and my family, like “My mom wears the burqa – mainly because she doesn’t want to be seen with my dad”, many audiences find it. is uncomfortable laughing. There is a hesitation, a delay; it’s like they need me to give them permission to laugh nervously.

White comedians tell me: “Only you can make this joke”. That’s right. But even so, people are careful. They don’t want to be seen making fun of someone because of their color or religion. It’s the same in the green halls of comedy concerts. As comedians we often joke with each other, make jokes and laugh at each other – but I have never heard someone prank at the expense of another comedian based on their race or of his religion, and I’m sure if they did, they would be called him.

It hasn’t always been that way, of course. In the 1970s, Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson were both racist and funny. It was then acceptable for them to use the P word in their comedy, just like this woman on the train had done, and the audience comfortably laughed with it.

Since then, however, there has been the Race Relations Act, which outlawed discrimination, and high-profile campaigns like the anti-apartheid movement, Show Racism the Red Card, and Black Lives Matter. The world has changed. He evolved.

Racism is no joke. It’s racism.

I am Pakistani. Some would say that calling me “Paki” is short for Pakistani. It’s not. It is a racial insult that has been built on hatred, aggression and violence. It is associated with a time in history when my parents first came to this country and were mistreated and attacked because of the color of their skin and where they are from. A better abbreviation might be “Stani” – which doesn’t have any harmful connotations. I’m from Birmingham and I don’t find it offensive to be called Brummie either – because it’s really an abbreviation of Birmingham.

There are things I say in private that I would never say in public, like how I have to stop shoplifting in charity shops and stealing candy from the pick ‘n’ mix. My friends also tell me things in private, things about my mustache and my bad life decisions and bad hairstyles. But even in private, they would never tell me the P word – there can be no joking with a word that has such obscurity, a word that is only ever used to humiliate and hit.

Duwayne Brooks, Stephen Lawrence’s friend who was with him the night of his murder, said he heard one of Lawrence’s attackers use racist slurs before attacking him. If you think the words N and P are just “friendly jokes,” you should ask Doreen Lawrence and the parents of other people whose lives have been lost in racist attacks if they think the same.

There really is no such thing as British jokes. We are the best. With the queue and the tutting, it’s a national pastime, like complaining about the weather. So what is the joke? It is the exchange of words in a tone of good humor and teasing. Jokes can be about the clothes people wear, their hairstyle, their facial hair, their shoes. Racism should never enter it.

I would be very happy to create a list for each football and cricket pitch just to make it clear.

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