So in that episode of Better Off Ted about the racist motion sensors, the company’s solution is to give each black employee a white person to trigger the sensors for them. Naturally, those black employees find other uses for their white people.
LEM: Can you believe this?
EMPLOYEE: I know, isn’t it great! We all get our own free white guys!
LEM: You like it?
EMPLOYEE: Yeah. Hey, Ty’s the best. He anticipates everything I need, plus, he picked up my dry cleaning. Oh, and he got this kink out of my neck.
LEM: Really?
EMPLOYEE: Mm-hm.
LEM: My white guy sucks.
EMPLOYEE: Maybe you’re just not using yours right.
(I can’t for the life of me track down the character name for the other black employee in this conversation. I did try.)
It reminds me suddenly of an afternoon decades ago at the L Cafe in Williamsburg, where a table sign reading, “Ask your wait person about our breakfast cakes!” became, “Ask your white person about our breakfast cakes!“—which in turn became a running gag for the next hour, mostly centered around the idea of adopting white people from the White People Pound, and receiving helpful advice such as, “Always remember to curb your white person.”