Paul Mooney on ‘The Complexion for the Protection’

‘100 Funniest Comedy Albums’ Book Excerpt

Frank Mastropolo

Urban Home Entertainment

Comedian and comedy writer Paul Mooney worked for years as the behind-the-scenes partner with Richard Pryor. Mooney also was a writer and performer on Chappelle’s Show. Mooney continued his stand-up career after Pryor died in 2005.

Released in 2012, A Piece of My Mind was recorded at the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta. Mooney targets politicians, pop icons like Mel Gibson and Tiger Woods, social justice, and race in America.

White folks, we don’t try to take nothing of yours. Why do they try to take our stuff? We don’t try to take nothin’! We didn’t try to take Elvis. We didn’t try to take Joan of Arc. We didn’t try to take Helen of Troy. They always trying to take our shit and recycle it, and say it’s theirs.

Ain’t that a trip? We just loved us some Tina Turner, remember? They took her. Remember Lionel Richie? We loved him! They took him! They take our shit! I ain’t bullshittin’!

If I’m lying, correct me. They took James Brown. Oh, they gave him back. They took O.J. They gave him back! Anything we like, they take! Remember the Cookie Man? They took them goddamn cookies!

Remember Essence? White folks own it. See? The Apollo, white folks own it. BET, Almost Black Television, white folks own it. All we’ve got left is Jet. And I’m worried about ‘em.

Race means everything in America. When you have the complexion for the protection, for the collection, that white skin will protect you. That’s why when I see homeless white people, I just start crying. What a waste of white skin.

Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, ain’t nothing but black folks that can swim. Africans, I can’t stand Africans. I don’t like Africans ’cause they have attitude. They have attitude towards us, and they act like they mad at us.

You got it twisted. We are mad at you. We waited, and nobody came for us! You punk motherfuckers! Any other race would’ve declared war on America and asked for their people back.

Africans wrote us off like a bad check. Then they going to show up 400 years later with a briefcase full of watches. I don’t need no goddamn watch. I know what time it is!

“People say to me, you shock me,” Mooney told NPR in 2009.

“And I say, I shock myself. I think funny is funny. I’m a comedian last and first, OK? People will say I’m political; I’m this, I’m that, I’m racial.

“I can only live my life and my experience the way I experience it and how I react to it, you know? I’m as American as apple pie. I don’t live on Mars or on some other planet. I come from Earth, so I’m relating from Earth. I’m reacting from living here.”

“Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don’t have it,” Mooney wrote in his memoir, Black Is the New White.

“Maybe it’s my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”

Paul Mooney, 79, died in 2021.

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Funniest Comedy Albums, one of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.