Roseanne is under fire for a joke.
During Tuesday’s episode (April 3), Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Dan (John Goodman) fall asleep in front of the TV, sleeping “from Wheel to Kimmel.”
“We missed all the shows about black and Asian families,” Dan says to Roseanne.
“They’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up,” Roseanne responds.
The joke prompted many responses from social media, including one from Master Of None actor and Bob’s Burgers writer Kelvin Yu.
“Here’s why the Roseanne joke about ‘missing all the shows about Black and Asian families’ matters. At the very least, it’s reductive and belittling, as if to say those shows are nothing more than ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’ in their existence. But the real kicker is when Roseanne says: ‘They’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up.’ Which implies that the point of any show about a minority family is simply to normalize them. That’s it. The stories, the humor, the characters … not important,” he wrote.
“Then you take ALLLLLL of that and put it in the mouth of an avowed Trump supporter (not the actress — the CHARACTER of Roseanne) and you have one stinky little s–t sandwich of a joke that ABC allowed to be served in their own restaurant. It’s a big deal.”
Former Fresh Off The Boat writer Kourtney Kang also responded in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter.
“In these jokes, and in the others like these, at the heart of them, whether the joke-teller means it or not, is a divisive spirit. ‘Us.’ ‘Them.’ It’s always drawing lines. Separating. Whenever these jokes have been said to me, the thing that is the most hurtful is not the insensitive dullard who said it. There’s always going to be people like that. What hurts the most is when everyone else in the room laughs,” she wrote.
