Remembering Eddie Murphy's 'White Like Me’

As an alternative to black face issues in Richard Pryor & Gene Wilder’s Silver Streak, some of you may remember this: Eddie Murphy, ‘White Like Me,’ Saturday Night Live (‘SNL’) (circa Dec. 15, 1984).

This made me laugh as a child, and it still makes me laugh now. It would be awful to live in a world where artists were precluded from making such pure comedy gold. 

See also Steve Ciabattoni et al., 50 Greatest ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketches of All Time, Rolling Stone (Feb. 3, 2014, 3:40 PM ET), <https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-lists/50-greatest-saturday-night-live-sketches-of-all-time-12735/8-white-like-me-22966/>: “Eddie Murphy’s whiteface sketch was the most provocative SNL moment since Richard Pryor dropped by in Season One. (In fact, it was an explicit homage to Pryor, who played the author of a book called White Like Me during his SNL appearance.) Murphy had recently become a movie star—‘the first black actor to take charge in a white world onscreen,’ as he later told Rolling Stone [sic]—and was struggling to find his place among the Hollywood elite. ‘White Like Me’ satirized his discomfort, showing the hidden opportunities afforded to white people when black guys leave the room. We wouldn’t see such powerful, audacious comedy about American race relations until Chappelle’s Show arrived, 20 years later.”

Seth Barrett Tillman, Remembering Eddie Murphy’s ‘White Like Me,’ New Reform Club (Feb. 8, 2019, 4:00 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2019/02/remembering-eddie-murphys-white-like-me.html>. 

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