Fated or cursed, I am plagued by my archetypically white interests: $14 Spring Street Market sandwiches, yerba mate tea in bright yellow cans, Lululemon leggings at the gym, and Ugg boots in the snow. The most difficult hour hits on Friday nights when I am on stage, post anxiety attack, in a Brandy Melville tank top, even though I run the club putting on the show. I put on People Against Comedy (PAC) comedy shows almost every other weekend, thinking about the feeling of my covers over my head at 14 years old: John Mulaney clips played on the lowest volume, stifled giggles unfamiliar to the pillows that muffled cries for so many years.
I could have loved Bharatanatyam enough to attend a college with an Indian classical dance team. I could have loved my faith enough to find a school that had a Hindu chaplain. I could have gone to a place where my peers didn’t have to fight to be represented in the curriculum, didn’t have to wait thirty years for the Asian American studies (AAS) concentration, and didn’t have to send their mom a voice memo when Yuri Kochiyama was on the syllabus.
But why desire an alternate history when I’m happy? When I’ve met people I love, people who have changed me, found me, fixed me, and made me a woman worth my childhood dreams?
Because as much as I love my friends, they don’t know what it’s like to worry when a joke lands. Did it land because I’m a woman or despite the fact I’m a woman? Are people looking at the pottu on my forehead? I shouldn’t take it off before sets, right? I shouldn’t do jokes on race, right? I should avoid sex jokes because people don’t find sexual women funny, right? I mean, how many more sets on Good Will Hunting can I do?
“Maybe it’s not that political,” she said. “It’s just comedy. It’s just silly.”
I stare at her blonde hair and green eyes as she tells me that jokes are unserious. The privilege to be silly, taunting me. I think back to sophomore year, crying at the last Combo Za practice, lamenting the eleven-hour flight to Heathrow, angry about leaving for the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford. All the women of color in Combo Za were leaving, and so was I. The College’s comedy was going to be as white as its winter months.
I ended up performing at Oxford even though I thought I would quit, because comedy loves me back right when I threaten to leave. There, I experienced microaggressions that my friends would call hate crimes. And I wrote sketches with main characters named Brittany instead of Priya, because what would Priya be doing in a comedy sketch? If comedy is “just silly,” an inherently political body, such as the brown woman’s, such as Priya’s, couldn’t be the main character in a sketch.
When asked if I thought Hasan Minhaj was racially targeted when canceled for lying in his standup, I said no. Of course he was. But if he was, wouldn’t I be? How could I support my inspiration without falling with him? How could I succeed when my options were to essentialize my experiences or assimilate to whiteness? I pay my dues to the art form in perennial unsafety and perpetual tokenism.
“Hey guys. We’re going to talk about writing stand-up. You can really write about anything; I write a lot about sex and race.” I was always hedging myself against criticism of my subject matter. I’d rather reduce my tight fives to sex jokes than give someone else the opportunity to do so.
When I came back to campus after 15 months away and I went to my first comedy meeting, I realized that the absence of three women of color from comedy had fundamentally changed the demographics of comedy at the College. During that time, most of the students of color that participated in the spring show were cast as non-comedic characters in the sketch, who are typically minor and background characters. Stand-up lineups were predominantly white, and there was no writer able to give comedians of color feedback on making jokes about identity. There were conversations about the need to diversify the group, out of fear it didn’t look good. So I banned the use of the word “optics” at my first board meeting.
“We met with the Davis Center last year when you were gone, and they said it was gonna be hard to get students of color to do comedy with us since it’s just white people. We’re so happy you’re back to handle the diversity thing.”
If I was on stage, I proved it was easy for people of color. Comedians of color in predominantly white spaces proved comedy wasn’t an institutional battle with your best friends; it wasn’t an emotional nightmare of compartmentalization; it didn’t age you. Your presence showed that even if you dreamt about the PAC show for six straight days in April, you were happy to. You were ready to get angry when your friend said, “who cares, it’s just stand up,” and you accept the tears when Ayo Edebiri wins awards, and all they do is ask her about Jeremy Allen White.
How can I, in good faith, advocate for the space I am happiest when I know it isn’t easy to be in? How do I offer respite from systemic whiteness in comedy for students of color? Have I been paying it well? Making it easier? I hope so; I’ve been so tired. How can I ask someone else to be this tired after I throw my cap in the air? Especially after my time away, when I discovered how quickly the enrollment demographics can change based on diversity in leadership.
Beset by a desire to bring joy to the world through a white man’s medium in a brown woman’s body with a white girl’s voice, I find myself in predominantly white spaces, hoping my ability to inspire others keeps me from drowning. I stay afloat because comedy is an offering of happiness that feeds into itself, even if it is difficult to navigate structurally. When I see other comedians of color excel on this campus, I am grateful for the students of color who have fought to get us here.
Quotes paraphrased for creative and anonymity purposes.
Shenba Vairavan ʼ24 is an English and American studies major from Los Angeles, Calif.
