Review: How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People

How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People by D.L. Hughley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Laugh at this one until you cry.

This is what happens when a thoughtful guy takes the time to explain how the world looks if you’re Black. It’s what happens when he writes to an implicitly Black audience in a way that even us white people can understand. And it’s what happens when that guy is also lights-out funny in the midst of the heavy stuff he has to report.

There may be some Dave Chappelle or Richard Pryor here – yeah, they’re the all-time reigning champs, I know – but I suspect there’s a heavy dose of Dick Gregory too. This is humor, humor about the weight of racism, but it’s humor focused as a studied political act. Hughley is performing pain and anger; he’s harnessing them into a performance.

At one time he jokes that he hopes his book will save just one person from getting shot, but not really. He wants it to save a lot of people because, if it were just one, he wouldn’t sell enough copies to make any money.

But, of course, he’s also deadly serious. He references far too many times when Black men – and sometimes Black women and Black children – have been shot for preposterous reasons: carrying a BB gun (unloaded) in a toy store on the way to pay for it, reaching for a wallet, saying “I have a gun” without reaching for it, or simply being large. He’s channeling real and abiding pain, but he knows how little Black pain seems to register in the larger world. So he’s making us laugh at the horror instead.

And, somehow, he keeps the laughs coming. At one point he goes into a tangent about police violence, noting that you know it’s a problem when they accidentally kill white people. He recounts a police killing of an Australian yoga instructor – blonde, no less – and refers to her as probably “the least killable person you can imagine.” “What’s next,” he muses, “Nicole Kidman?” That’s edgy but, with apologies to Nicole Kidman, it’s funny too.

Or there’s his quick analysis of the white dispossessed working class’s voting for Donald Trump because he promised to bring back the factory jobs that have mostly vanished. They don’t seem to realize, though, that it’s not immigration but automation that’s taken most of those jobs. As he puts it, “They voted from Trump, but they really needed DeVry.”

It’s rare to go long without being moved here, and it’s rare to go long without something to make you guffaw. It’s a spectacular performance, and it makes me respect this talented comedian even more than I already did.

As an answer to the question of his title, he concludes with a biting final observation: What’s the best way not to get shot? Don’t be Black.

As a white person, it’s not my job to say much in response to this. My job is to listen. Hard as these truths are, I’ve done that with an admiration that only amplifies the power of the message.


View all my reviews