Can someone explain this Whoopi Goldberg joke please?

Cafe Society
1

OK, I’m going to preface this by saying what Whoopi said prior to telling this joke: It will be frowned upon by The Community. But I think that was the point of the joke and what she was driving at; she’s sick of the labels, and the PC name of the month game. She asked the audience to think about why they found it was funny, and that was the end of her show, so she obviously thought it was important. The only thing is, I don’t get the joke. I didn’t smile, let alone laugh. It just seemed fairly stupid to me.

So on with the joke, told in as close to her exact language as I can recall:

A little black baby is flying around Heaven, trying out his wings and having a grand old time. He sees God in the distance and flies closer, waving and calling “Hey, God!” to which God replies [in cheery voice] “Hey!”

The baby flies closer and says to God, “Now that I have these wings and all, does that mean I’m an angel?” And God goes “No, nigga, 'cause you was bad!”

Cue: Audience, about equally balanced between black and white, laughing their heads off. I’m left feeling like the village idiot, because all I can think is “If he’s not an angel, what’s he doing in heaven with wings?” I hate feeling stupid!

Now, I understand the shock value of having God saying the N-word, and basically talking street-style. But I’ve long since heard all the jokes about God being female or of another race, and they’re old and not funny to me anymore, and I wouldn’t think they’d be particularly funny to an audience either.

So is it just the shock value (plus the fact that Whoopi Goldberg is telling it), or is there some point to this joke that I’m missing, and if so, what is it?

2

Is it maybe a joke on that “bad” is slang for “good”?

3

All it makes me think of is a joke I’ve heard involving little white babies and little black babies who die and both get wings. One group is called angels and the other is called bats. I can’t even remember much else and don’t feel like searching the web for it, or a variation. As I say, that’s all I can think of. It’s not funny to me as it reads in the OP.

4

FWIW, I don’t get it, either. Usually, in my experience, “bad” meaning “good” usually refers to quality, as in, “Hey, Mistah Ka-tare, that’s a baaad car you got there.” That’s another frequent quality of it, the longer, more drawn out vowel sound. Maybe the joke is showing that The Lord is Black, since “nigga” isn’t used much by non-Blacks as an address in casual conversation.

5

Maybe the line that the OP heard was not “No, nigga, 'cause you was bad!” but “No, nigga, 'cause you’re a bat!”

6

A Google search yeilded this quote which strongly suggests you are correct:

"THE LAST PART OF THE SHOW WAS INTERESTING WHEN SHE TOLD THE BLACK ANGEL JOKE. THE LIL BABY WITH WINGS ASKED GOD, ‘AM I AN ANGEL?’, AND HE RESPONDED 'NO N*A, YOU’RE A BAT!’ "

http://betboards.bet.com/forums/191151/ShowPost.aspx

7

I laughed at the joke as written in the OP. But then I laugh at incongruous juxtaposition generally. It works because it upends the entire setup we’ve just been given. But it’s also unexplained.

OTOH, the “bat” version doesn’t make sense to me, though I might’ve laughed at it if it had been delivered differently, just 'cos it’s bizarre. The idea that black children are bats not angels is neither familiar nor funny to me right now.

8

small black thing with wings = bat

I don’t think the punchline is any deeper than that.

9

That’s the correct line.

And (maybe I’m overthinking this in order to get it) it could mean that, because God is the god in our image, he could not only call the kid “nigga” but play the dozens too, 'cause they were in the same cultural subset?

OP, you were there?

10

No, I saw it on Bravo (The World According to Whoopi), and it’s entirely possible she said “You’re a bat!” I wasn’t completely certain what she’d said, so posted what seemed to make the most sense.

The bat thing is slightly more funny, but not much. And Whoopi definitely had God sounding streetwise as he said it.

11

btw, thanks for all your answers. I still don’t find the joke funny, but at least I can console myself that it seems to have been my hearing rather than my intellect that was at fault.

12

I saw it. I heard it as a contraction of “you is”, which is old Amos and Andy type stereotypical black speech. And so it was, “No, nigga, 'cause you’s a bat!” With a sufficiently unvoiced “a”, you could easily have come away with “'cause you was bad”, and especially since she used a gutteral stop for the “t” in “bat”, which again, stereotypically, can make “bad” and “bat” sound like homonyms.

13

Thanks, Lib, that makes me feel a little less idiotic!

14

Unless Whoopi told the joke that the bat thing is based on, she had to be relying on the audience being familiar with it beforehand. Is it possible she did that other joke first?

As best I can remember the joke it was something like:

Where do little white babies go when they die? Heaven.
What do they get on their backs? Wings.
What do you call them? Angels.

You can figure out the rest I hope.

It helps to tell it as if to a child, with a sweet and innocent tone of voice.