Here’s Why Jimmy Kimmel’s ‘Do The White Thing’ Wasn’t Funny

Jimmy Kimmel’s last day broadcasting live from Brooklyn might have gone all wrong. Personally, I think so. With a full week of monumental interviews with Jay Z, Misty Copeland, the cast of Back To The Future and more, Kimmel wanted to go out with a bang — and that he did.

To “celebrate” Spike Lee’s iconic 1989 film, Do The Right Thing‘s 26th anniversary, Kimmel re-imagined a four-minute “sequel”, Do The White Thing. The sketch featured a star-studded cast including members of HBO’s hit show GIRLS, Billy Crudup, Flava Flav (yes, he’s somewhere still working) Kimmel himself and even Rosie Perez — a member of the original film.

So here’s where it all goes wrong. In introducing the short film, that somehow seems to completely white-wash Brooklyn, Kimmel states, “Brooklyn has changed a lot since 1989. There used to be muggers right in this neighborhood, stealing old ladies purses. Now those old lady purses are being worn ironically by hipsters in the area.”

Kimmel, having been born and raised in the borough, I thought would have a lot more to say of “old Brooklyn” than a place where people were mugged.

While we can all completely agree the gentrification of Brooklyn is very much alive, the sketch is not, in the words of Kimmel, “the feeling and spirit of Brooklyn, New York now.” The Brooklyn imagined in the short clip is filled with man-buns, scruffy beards, thrift shops and white folk screaming for locally sourced food.

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The film kicked-off displaying “1989 Brooklyn”, filled with black people having fun in the street with open fire hydrants and large boomboxes — a typical Brooklyn summer, filled with culture. The sketch quickly changes over to “2015 Brooklyn” where white people have taken over the borough, aimlessly trying to open fire-hydrants and thanking their neighbors for stepping on their new Converses.

Anyone not originally from Brooklyn, I can see how you would think this is extremely hilarious but from an original Brooklynite, like myself, trying to keep the culture of this borough is something that I try hard to fight for, daily. Sketches like this are appalling. This is what everyone on the outside looking in sees Brooklyn as being.

Before you watch the clip, can I interject and state that Brooklyn is more than the now gentrified Williamsburg and Bushwick (because if you’ve lived in Brooklyn long enough, you know these two neighborhoods have completely changed from what they used to be). Brooklyn is still very much diverse and culturally spread out. East New York, Flatbush and Canarsie are still part of the borough, I suggest you visit those places and get back to me on how you see Brooklyn as a whole.

But for now, I’ll leave you with the sketch: