Is Black-White Friendship Site Offensive or Funny?

Nov. 25, 2002 -- In an array of photos on their Web site, a white couple named Sally and Johnny are sipping wine and joking around with African-American friends, boasting that they have figured out how to befriend black people.

The site, blackpeopleloveus.com, includes a number of "testimonials," from the couple's black friends about how great they are.

"Sally loves to touch my hair!" one black woman who wears dreadlocks writes. "She always asks me how I got my hair to do this. That makes me feel special. Like I have magical powers!

Another "friend" writes that the couple often ask him to decipher rap lyrics and black slang.

"Sally and Johnny give me ample opportunities to translate rap lyrics, reggae songs, and/or street slang!" he writes. "Like I'm a mouthpiece for many, many cultures of dark-skinned people."

The site's creators, Chelsea Peretti, a 24-year-old stand-up comedian, and her brother, Jonah Peretti, a 28-year-old Web designer, say they meant for their Web site to be a joke.

They say they didn't think everyone would find the comedy within their site, but they didn't want to offend or anger anyone.

"I think when you're using humor, it's not something that everyone will think is funny," Chelsea said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.I don't think humor is always a universal thing. If everyone thought it was funny, I would be surprised," she said.

Site Points Up Stereotypes

Chelsea and her brother are both white, but they grew up with a black stepmother. They say they have seen racial misunderstandings close up. The Web site was created as a satirical look at the way some whites unintentionally condescend to and offend African-Americans in clumsy attempts to "relate."

"For me and Jonah, we were raised with humor as somewhat of a survival skill and a way of securing things that you are uncomfortable with," Chelsea said.

Jonah says he asssumed it would be controversial on some level, but he says they never meant to make light of a very serious subject.

"We were trying to create a site that satirizes subtle forces of racism," he said.

Andrew Ward, a Boston radio station executive, said the site may not be intentionally racist, but it is offensive, and perpetuates stereotypes, lumping all black people into one group. Nine times out of 10 it will strike a wrong chord with both blacks and whites, he said.

"The stereotypes are serious," Ward said, who is African-American. "By poking fun at white people and throwing black people in there and making it seem as though they accept what's going on, we're not getting to the root of the problem. When you make light of something, you're lessening its importance," he said.

On the other hand, Omar Wasow, who is African-American and the founder of blackplanet.com, said he finds value in the site, in that its content mirrors situations that have actually happened to him.

In one of the testimonials, a black man on the site writes: "Johnny is generous enough to remark upon how 'articulate' I am! That makes me feel good!"

White people have told him that he does not talk like a black man and he has also had people come up to him and talk in "black" slang, Wasow said. Others have come up to him and touched his dreadlocks.

"People ask to touch my hair all the time," Wasow said. "What is particularly sort of troublesome for me is when someone will touch me without asking," he said.

Ward agrees that the site does reflect situations that occur in real life, but he's not laughing about them.

"I hear 'you're the whitest black person I know.' What's a white black person? I don't think they realize how that affects me," Ward said.

Just Like You!

Sally and Johnny describe themselves as run-of-the-mill in a section of the site called "about us."

"We're just regular, normal people — just like you! We grew up in your average neighborhoods doing the usual things that all people do: swimming, golf, horseback riding, arts and crafts, gardening, building tree houses, mowing the lawn, selling lemonade, etc."

Some people writing into the site supported the dialogue it created, and said the tongue-in-cheek humor hit home.

"It made me look at my own actions and ideas. I realized that I too have made the comment 'He or she is very articulate' referring to a black person … " one person wrote.

Another person described it as " … a wake-up call for all of us white people who think, 'oh, but I'm not racist,' who think we're 'down' with the black community."

But an opponent of the Web site had strong words, too:

"We all knows how racism works is this country," the letter said. "To make fun of it just lets people off the hook. You would think you could be a little bit more sensitive."