By Sarah Eve Rosen

A little over a year ago, during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I attended a live stand-up comedy show in West Palm Beach, Florida. The comedian, Ricky Velez, started his performance with the line: “I am not into politics, I don’t know about that stuff.” Among some of his sillier jokes (such as claiming he thought fracking was a sex position), he also joked about growing up in a poor, predominantly Puerto Rican community, and the cultural shock he experienced when he began to date his affluent, white Jewish girlfriend. He made jokes such as: “her family is so rich, they live to be so old—it’s wild,” as the predominantly white, non-social distanced, and mask-less crowd burst into laughter . . .