Comedian Joe White heckled with racist slur in Perth

Joe White was having a great night with a “beautiful crowd” when everything changed in an instant.

Joe White was performing at the Perth Fringe Festival. Picture: Supplied

Comedian Joe White was doing his regular set at the Perth Fringe Festival when an audience member heckled him with a racial slur.

White, who is Ethiopian-Australian, likes to work the room, and he started a bit with an audience member about Perth suburbs when the mood turned in an instant.

That audience member, who initially seemed to love the performance and was clapping along, became disruptive when White moved onto to another joke. That’s when the person called White the N-word.

“My jaw dropped and I gasped for air,” White told news.com.au. “In my head, I started thinking about how do I respond? I had my left hand on my cheek, ‘Oh man, how am I going to get out this one, how am I going to manage this one?’”

White said he knew he couldn’t escalate the situation. He wasn’t sure how the audience member would react if provoked, and he worried about the safety of his staff and the rest of the 70-person audience.

“I said to him, ‘Why would you say that, that’s a terrible word, everyone’s traumatised, their buttholes are tightening up’. Now everyone is laughing nervously.”

White said he didn’t want to make light of it and wanted to immediately address what happened with a message of disapproval, but he also didn’t want things to potentially escalate and become violent.

“People were really uncomfortable but he’s there laughing at his own ‘joke’.”

White considered ending the show there and then but didn’t want to disappoint everyone else, and he really didn’t want them leaving the show with that exchange as the last thing they saw.

There was another half-hour left on the clock and it was “the longest 30 minutes I’ve done in comedy”.

“Everyone was having a great time, it was a beautiful crowd and he tarnished it.

“The last thing I wanted was violence at my show. I wanted to call it out more aggressively but in the interest of the safety of everyone else, I couldn’t.

Joe White was doing a show at the Perth Fringe Festival. Picture: Supplied

“A lot of the time, when [comedians from non-white backgrounds] perform, we’re the only one in the room of our ethnicity so when a racist heckle comes at us, it’s targeted at just us.

“I have to regulate my emotions and control myself. I had to put me last. When you’re on stage as a black person, you’re not just representing you, you’re representing your whole race.”

That audience member stayed in the tent for the rest of the show and even sought out White after the performance. White said he was open to having the conversation with the man because he could then engage with him as a person and not as a performer.

“I told him he killed the show. I said to him, ‘Why would you use that word? It makes black people feel inferior, that’s the history’.

“He looked confused and started to say that’s not what he meant. He made no sense and was so incoherent.

“Hopefully he’ll go away and he won’t do that again. It was an educational moment but I shouldn’t have to do that. He’s a grown man.

“I was a zombie for the rest of the night.”

White said there was a broader conversation to be had about the N-word, and that “if you’re not black, you have no business saying it, and even if you are.”

White explained he has an African-American friend who hates the word and had told him never to use it because it was so wrapped in the history of slavery and prejudice.

“The history of that word is terrible. I respect that and I don’t use it.”

White said the organisers of the Perth Fringe Festival has been very supportive and was considering the implementation of a “safe word” system so that each performer could use a phrase or word to signal to the team to grab nearby security guards.

Even though the N-word had not been publicly used against him before in 10 years of performing, he knows that other performers have had that experience.

White has a handful more performances of his show, Joe White: Ethiopian & Still Not Hungry, at the Perth Fringe Festival and he also created an showcase for African acts in the festival, which will be staged on February 19.