Members of Columbia University’s Asian American Alliance (AAA) reportedly booted Saturday Night Live comic and writer Nimesh Patel from the stage on Friday night because Patel’s jokes were deemed “racist” and “homophobic,” Fox News reports.
First reported by college paper The Columbia Daily Spectator, witnesses at the event were split on Patel’s set, in which he asserted being a gay African American man can’t be a choice: “No one looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘this black thing is too easy, let me just add another thing to it,’” according to the report.
“The message they were trying to send with the event was opposite to the jokes he was making, and using people’s ethnicity as the crux of his jokes could be funny but still offensive,” student Adam Warren reportedly said. “He definitely wasn’t the most crass comedian I’ve ever heard but for the event it was inappropriate.”
Other students, including Elle Ferguson, told the Daily Spectator that the organization “should have talked to him beforehand” because comedy is “known for being ground-breaking and for pushing boundaries.”
“While what some of the things that he said might have been a bit provoking to some of the audience, as someone who watches comedy a lot, none of them were jokes that I hadn’t heard before and none of them were jokes that elicited such a response in my experience,” Ferguson reportedly said.
Patel, who is an Emmy Award nominee and the first Indian-American writer for SNL, was interrupted by members of the AAA after about a half-hour of performing. While he defended himself — saying he was exposing the audience to ideas found “in the real world” — his mic was cut and he left.
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