Buzzfeed recently caught backlash after it posted the video “27 Questions Black People Have for Black People.” The video created backlash due to the awkward nature of the questions. Most of the questions appeared to be created by uniformed White people.
Some of the ridiculous questions include “Why do people with light skin look better then people with dark skin?”; “Why is it so hard to be on time?” and “Why do we call each other the N-word and we get upset when a white person uses the N-word?”
During a recent interview with Key and Peele, who star in the new movie Keanu, the two comedians responded to Buzzfeed’s awful post:
Peele: The questions sound like somebody who doesn’t understand what they’re talking about. I’m not sure how they could come up with that.
Key: The first one makes no sense to me. The second one I can give a psychological answer. Psychology says that when people, when humans, people are late, not just black people. But when people are late, it’s a control issue. Well since people owned us, I can see there might be an intrinsic thing in the fiber of our tissue, in our being which is, ‘I’m not going to be on time, I’m not going to subscribe to your construct of what time is. You’ve been owning us for 400 years.’ Maybe that’s subconscious. Because I know that’s a psychological phenomenon. People are late because they want things to happen on their schedule. Now, we’ve all agreed that if I’m going be there at three o’clock, we should all just be here at three o’clock. The first question doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s a value judgment. It’s the same way that Belgians just walked up to people in Rwanda and said, ‘You’re a Tutsi, you’re a Hutu. Why? Because your nose is bigger than his. So the light skin and dark skin question doesn’t make any sense. Faces are about symmetry. You have a symmetrical face or you don’t.
Key: And then the N-word question to me is about appropriation. It’s a control issue, isn’t that a part of our destiny? When do we get to do everything we want on our own terms? You made all the rules, now that’s our rule.
