Funny Skit About Black People Names

"I pity the fool!": the words are simple, yet packed with cultural meaning. This catchphrase, taken from the 1982 film Rocky III, is synonymous with American actor and TV personality Mr. T. The phrase has come to define his career, most notably in the live-action life lessons featured after his show Mister T, a Saturday morning cartoon which aired during his mid-1980s heyday.

The Key & Peele sketch "When Mr. T Won't Leave You Alone" expertly parodies Mr. T's life lessons, recreating their '80s aesthetic and didactic tone. But the object of the parody is actually quite slippery. What seems, at first, like a playful send-up of 1980s American culture, Mr. T. included, becomes an occasion to signify how black life and racial oppression are trivialized in America.

For the sketch, Jordan Peele dons Mr. T's iconic denim overalls, plentiful gold chains, and famous mohawk hairstyle. He also performs an impeccable impression of Mr. T's voice — strong, directive, and assertive. These are the obvious reference points of the sketch; the less obvious one is the memorably odd, three-minute video for the song "Treat Your Mother Right," part of Mr. T's hour-long motivational video Be Somebody … or Be Somebody's Fool (1984).

"Treat Your Mother Right" begins with a black boy and white girl arguing, the girl teasing the boy for being young, the boy insulting her for her weight ("You're so fat they have to jack you up to take off your shoes!"). They go back and forth, playing the dozens, and it's only when the girl retorts, "Well, your mom is so…" that Mr. T appears suddenly and cuts them off, instructing them not to insult mothers. "Don't bring anyone's mother into this," he counsels. "She ain't here, and if it wasn't for her, you wouldn't be here."

It's an oddly plotted opening to the song, especially for a seemingly straightforward video: Mr. T does not address why the kids are fighting in the first place, nor does he advise them against teasing one another based on their appearance. It's as if the hint of the phrase "yo' mama" has summoned Mr. T out of the blue. From there he sings, or rather intones, "Treat Your Mother Right," a synth-heavy R&B number, with the help of a trio of backup singers.

Key & Peele's "When Mr. T Won't Leave You Alone" closely mimics both the style and the peculiarities of "Treat Your Mother Right." It opens with a purple and blue gradient background with archaic animations in red. The image softly glitches to capture the '80s VHS aesthetic, and even the aspect ratio is the same.

The sketch opens, like "Treat Your Mother Right," with a boy and a girl arguing. "Nobody likes you, you girl!" the boy says, to which the girl responds, "Well you're a different color than me, and that's bad!" The boy replies, "Oh yeah, well you dress like a —" Finally Mr. T pops onto the scene and interrupts — not to address the boy's sexism or the girl's racism, but rather to teach the lesson that one must never make fun of how someone dresses. "Whether it's overalls, chains, or feather earrings!" he adds, describing his present get-up.

The characters reconcile, but soon get into another argument. This time the children discuss getting into a stranger's van for candy. When the girl is hesitant to get in the van, the boy insults her: "Is it because you have a stupid name, like Scout?" he asks. Immediately, Mr. T jumps in to lecture the kids about the importance of respecting each other's names. "Mr. T, again!" the kids chant in unison, losing some of their prior enthusiasm and becoming more aware of the strangeness of Mr. T's lessons — how literally "self-centered" they are.

The threat of creepy pedophiles? That's nothing compared to the problem of people making fun of your name because, as Peele's Mr. T puts it, "your mama gave you that name or you made it up for business purposes." With a noticeable quiver in his voice, he declaims, "Mr. T is a cool name. It's a cool name, Mr. T!" before jumping back out of the frame.

Like the kids in the sketch, we start to wonder where this business with Mr. T might take us. In the final conversation between the two kids, the boy pitches that they "do some drugs" and the girl wonders, "Aren't drugs bad?" They look at one another and then look around for Mr.T, who is nowhere to be found. "Maybe we can drink a bunch of alcohol," the boy suggests; again they look in all directions. The girl, confused, pushes her role: "Yum, that sounds good." Still no Mr. T.

Hesitantly, the boy says, "Well, guess what? Your hair is stupid." Suddenly, Mr. T bursts into frame, scaring the boy with his abrupt bark: "Never make fun of another person's hair! A person's hair is the artwork that they present to the heavens!"

Then, with no transition, Peele's Mr. T is shown holding a microphone and launching into a song, backed by a trio of female singers. The song directly echoes the original "Treat Your Mother Right," using the same beat and acrostic lyrical style, with "M-O-T-H-E-R" replaced by "H-A-I-R" (e.g. "H is for the home where I lay my head and I cry about your mean jokes in my bed").

Compared with the original, the set-up is even more contrived, as the backup singers hit their notes standing next to a swing set. Yet the song ends with a naked emotional moment: Mr. T whimpering, breaking down in tears, crying out "you fools!", then underlining the intensity of his pain. "For real," he says, drawing the sketch to a close.

***

Mr. T's self-oriented lessons are at once superfluous and urgent. Throughout the sketch, he subverts expectations and continually avoids teaching lessons about obviously important issues — racism, child abuse, drug addiction — and instead focuses on seemingly arbitrary matters that concern him more personally. On the surface, these lessons seem reflexively defensive, if not blinkered. But these repeatedly missed educational opportunities are more than just sources of comedy; in fact, they hold a deeper critique of the sociocultural manifestations of racism.

The sketch's drastic progression and Mr. T's ultimate tearful wail force us to reevaluate Mr. T and his humanity. By taking a deeper look at the signifiers that Mr. T focuses on — fashion, names, and hair — we can understand how these are not trivial matters. They are contested terrain in the battle between racism and anti-racism.

For Mr. T's first lesson, the children's choice of clothes seems less consequential than their racist and sexist remarks, which seem to require more immediate intervention. Self-fashioning, however, is inextricable from Mr. T's identity. At the height of his popularity, Mr. T was often ridiculed for the way he dressed when, in fact, his style was very symbolic. "When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists and our ankles in steel chains," he told the Harvard Crimson in 1993. "I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher."

Mr. T's earrings, which he adamantly defends in the sketch, are also part of a larger antiracist statement: he wears three on his right ear to represent the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered during 1964's Freedom Summer.

But despite the profound cultural significance behind his appearance, Mr. T has still often been flattened into a caricature, his sartorial activism ignored. Indeed, his own show glossed over the deeper meaning fashion might express: on "Mr. T Fashion Show" all he has to say about the matter is that "clothes express your personality, not someone else."

By taking a deeper look at the signifiers that Mr. T focuses on — fashion, names, and hair — we can understand that these are not trivial matters. They are contested terrain in the battle between racism and anti-racism.

In his next lesson, Mr. T punts on the opportunity to educate two children about stranger danger, instead latching onto the issue of respecting one another's names. However this is not an insignificant lesson: names carry a lot of weight, and traditionally African American names have often been skewered and stigmatized in popular culture.

Furthermore, prejudices against names can have real world effects. For instance, several studies have shown that job applicants with African-American names are less likely to be hired than applicants with Anglo-American names, even if they have the same qualifications.

The final lesson, which Mr. T delivers musically, culminates in a dramatic appeal to pathos, as Mr. T's deeply felt wails penetrate the educational artifice of the video. As the children contemplate doing drugs, Mr. T cuts into their conversation, breaking into song about the sacredness of hair.

But his take on hair has a deeper significance coming from a black man, as the styling of black hair has a rich and troubled history in America. Mr. T's own hairstyle is not only iconic but also historically and culturally meaningful: Mr. T has said that he modeled his hair after an African tribe from Mali called the Mandinka warriors, who wear their hair in his distinctive mohawk style.

Indeed, when Mr. T instructs us that "A person's hair is the artwork that they present to the heavens!" his claim is actually rooted in West African tradition, where, in Yoruba culture, people braided their hair to send messages to the gods, as hair was seen as the most elevated part of the body and therefore a portal for spirits to enter into the soul.

In modern-day America, many white people misunderstand the cultural significance of hair because of their privilege. Hair, especially when worn in its natural style, is a source of discrimination for many African Americans. From drugstores locking away black hair products to schools punishing black students for wearing their natural hair, black hair is and always has been a battleground for racial conflicts to play out.

So when Mr. T utters a teary yet ferocious "For real!" he is not only punctuating his previous points, but also begging to be taken seriously. It is an emotional moment that signals to us that this is "for real" — that these matters that may seem trivial to a privileged few are in fact pressing for African Americans.

The sketch spends almost twenty seconds hanging on his anguish. Whether we imagine that we're watching Mr. T going off-script and becoming excruciatingly vulnerable in a PSA that's expected to have the tone of an after-school special, or Jordan Peele losing himself in the role of a sorrow-struck Mr. T in a sketch that's had the tone of a light-hearted parody, it makes for uncomfortable viewing. And when we consider how Mr. T has been mistreated and reduced by popular culture, those tears become more haunting still.

Monica De Loera ('21) is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently studies English and Digital Journalism. She has an extensive list of aspirations — among them becoming a comedy sketch writer, music journalist, and children's book author. In her free time, she loves cooking with friends, tending to her plants, and mentoring at a local elementary school.

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Source: https://ageofobama.berkeley.edu/key-and-peele/tag/african-american-naming-practices/

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