I often tell my wife that she does not understand what it meant to be afraid of black anger on radio and tv in DC in the 1970s. Being 8 or 9 and running across Petey Green on TV was pretty frightening. A piece like this, with Petey's homespun attitude mixed with the obvious racial stereotype hanging over my shoulders, that guilt of listening to a scout master's watermelon jokes and not sticking up for my black classmates (Scouts were hosted at churches or synagogues and therefore most often segregated by religion and race) was just too much to bear sometimes. Sometime around 1982 the senior class at my high school invited Petey Green to speak at the graduation, which became an ungodly mess of ironic racism as well. If there's one thing Dave Chappelle put to bed, it was white guilt over black humor.

I'd like to hear from the editors at DCist why you chose to post this on your site. I'm honestly curious to know...