Last week, Open Mike Eagle and Baron Vaughn’s Comedy Central show The New Negroes tackled the dangers of forgetting to code switch at the office with guest Danny Brown in their hilarious, water jug-punting video for “Unfiltered.” This time around, they recruit musical guest MF Doom (who unfortunately does not make an appearance in the video clip) to send up the “cop that lives inside all Black men’s heads.”
In the video, Open Mike goes through a day of totally normal errands as his own internal police monitors and assesses the perceived illegality of his actions via heads-up display. Just going to the store to pick fruit results in near code-red alert levels, with the irony of the joke being that for Black men, everything always looks suspect because, as Mike puts it lyrically, we were all “raised thinking brown is the guiltiest sin.”
The campy, funny part is that the old, Asian lady next to him at the market is actually committing the crime everyone else suspects Mike of doing, stuffing apples into her bag like there’s an impeding famine. The video ends on a bitter note, with Mike sitting down a young Black boy and giving him “The Talk,” which results in another tiny cop reporting for duty in the the little boy’s mind.
It’s a prime example of how Mike and Vaughn’s show uses comedy to tackle serious subjects. You can watch more of The New Negroes here.
