“Diversity in the arts is a subject that’s very close to my face,” jokes Nish Kumar in his smart new fringe set. Kumar was really interesting about race and UK comedy when we spoke a month before the festival, arguing that – unlike in the US – black and minority ethnic acts here were under no obligation to address race in their comedy. I’ve seen ample evidence to substantiate that claim on the Fringe so far, and it’s struck me what a sea change that represents since I wrote about racial diversity (or the lack of it) on the fringe over a decade ago.
Back then, in 2002, there was only one - one! - black comedian with his own show on the fringe. (Reginald D Hunter, seeing as you ask.) When I asked the comic Junior Simpson why he wasn’t in Edinburgh, he said: “When I was there in 1998, the black population increased by 50% – because I was there.” In short, this was not a comedy festival known for diversity, and nor – if you did go see a black or ethnic minority act – would it be easy to ignore that fact about them.
That’s changed, although I’m not sure how much credit the fringe, or the industry, can take for it. I suspect it’s plain-old social change that is behind the widened skin-colour palette of Edinburgh sketch and standup. The effect, though, is unmissable. The hot new sketch trio Daphne are racially diverse (black, white, Chinese) and seldom allude to it. The double act In Cahoots have called their show Two White Guys, but they’re not. Lolly Adefope is one of the rising stars of the circuit, but interest in her – as far as I can gauge – has little to do with her skin colour, which she rarely references in her act.
This development has been accompanied by a relaxation, now and then visible among younger comics, of the tension around joking about race in comedy. For a long time, white comics circled around the subject, or – if they addressed it – were self-conscious about doing so, about flagging their (ironic or otherwise) intention and effect. Younger comics are freer with their jokes about race (and gender) – which sometimes strikes older viewers like me as insensitive, or politically naive, but which may signify a generation evolving beyond the need for such sensitivity, or such politics. The next frontier, presumably – and Bridget Christie’s new material on race flashes forward to it – is an environment in which cultures and colours joke about race equally without offence being easily caused or taken.
There’s not yet grounds for complacency. Last year, Dane Baptiste became the first black Briton to feature on an Edinburgh comedy award shortlist, and – in a recent interview – he speculated openly about whether tokenism played a part in that. He addresses race extensively in his new show, but because he wants to, I think, not because he has to. While we’ve improved on those 2002 diversity stats, fringe comedy is still, disproportionately to demographic trends, far more white than brown or black. That’s obviously a race issue, but it’s also a class issue: as Reg Hunter told me way back then, “black skin can be a red herring. It’s more of a working-class thing.” Whereas black or brown skin used to stand out on the fringe, it’s now a poverty-stricken background that seems – and is sold as being – exotic.
That is a bigger question, which I’ll return to later in the festival. In the meantime, let’s celebrate that you no longer have to be white to feel at home in the world of fringe comedy.
