Liberal? White? Guilty as hell? Let Randall Otis help you get through your tough, tough times with ASMR for White Liberals.

FIELD NOTES FROM THE FUNNY OR DIE STAFF

There are two terms that need to be defined before the genius of this satire can be fully understood or appreciated. First, ASMR — the acronym stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response” which is a fancy way of saying “the chills you feel down your back or on your scalp when someone has a particularly soothing voice or when you hear light tapping of rain on windows,” no one really knows why it happens as it’s a very recently discovered phenomenon, but over the last few years it’s been used to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and insomnia.

Now, white fragility. This is also a pretty freshly coined term, but it hasn’t been as well received as ASMR. White fragility was coined by sociologist Robin DiAngelo in 2011, and it describes the frankly deplorable way that white people handle discussions around race and racism — usually by being immediately defensive or almost hostile. For instance, if you’re white, I bet when you read that last sentence the first thing that went through your mind was, “HEY! Not me, I’m great at discussing race!” And that’s part of the problem. We’re terrible at having difficult conversations without becoming inflamed or feeling personally attacked, we’re awkward as hell around people of color (even if we believe we mean well), oftentimes we feel like we deserve some sort of recognition for doing the bare minimum, and we often need to be comforted by the nearest black or brown person if we feel like we’ve maybe done something that’s politically incorrect.

And, folks, that needs to end.

White people, we have a lot of growing up to do. We need to swallow our own pride, learn to have discussions about race without immediately getting defensive, be more mindful of how we interact with others, stop expecting to be coddled, and most importantly, we need to learn how to listen.

A good place to start is by enjoying — and taking the time to really pay attention to — this soothing satire by comedian Otis Randall that deals with some potentially uncomfortable topics in the most velvety way possible.

CREDITS

WRITER & PRODUCER Randall Otis

DIRECTOR John Hammond

Find more of Randall’s work at https://randallotis.com/

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