Melissa Harris-Perry   |  February 17, 2013

Race jokes: The fine line between funny and offensive

Melissa Harris-Perry looks back into the vault and watches Obama impersonator Reggie Brown at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference.

Share This:

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> when we talk about race, we tend to speak with serious overtones. joking about race is no joke. we tend to do it. often with a ting of nervousness depending on the audience. there's a fine line of being funny and offensive as we found out when we went into the vault. for a look back at the 2011 republican leadership conference. obama impersonator, reggie brown was there to entertain the crowd. he was pulled off the stage after telling racially themed jokes. take a look.

>> a few months back, the family and i took a nice relaxing vacation in the state of my birth, hawaii. or as the tea partiers still call it, kenya. my favorite month is february, black history month. michelle, she celebrates the full month. you know, i celebrate half. my father was a black man from kenya and my mother was a white woman from kansas. so, yes, my mother loved a black man and no she was not a kardashian.

>> oh, i hope we get to keep our show after this next segment because we are going to ask, did you hear the one about justin bieber up on "snl" doing his black history month thing? tips from a white canadian on how to tell a race joke. that is