Is the suspect black or white? 'SNL' offers laugh-out-loud social commentary on race – USA TODAY, USA Today

Though the topics “President Trump” and “impeachment“loomed large during host Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s episode of” Saturday Night Live, “two of the funniest sketches were about something else entirely.

Their common theme: Race relations.

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In “Mid-Day News,” Waller-Bridge and her other news co-anchors (Kenan Thompson, Ego Nwodim, Alex Moffat and Chris Redd) learn that a suspected robber of a gas station is white. As a result, the black anchors high five and cheer on-air, celebrating the fact that they’re “just glad that he ain’t one of us.” The white anchors are aghast over “this petty game,” until they find out that a man assaulted someone for stepping on his Air Jordans. “That’s black, for sure,” says Moffat, who proceeds to dab.

The WANU news reading of crime stories becomes an intra -office battle of black v. white, with perp descriptions that subvert expectations of race, and reactions (particularly from Nwodim) that are laugh-out-loud funny. The clip calls to mind Comedy Central’s 2017 special “The Fake News with Ted Nelms,” which included a similar bit about an attackerfitting “a certain profile.”

In the sketch “Royal Romance,” the premise is race-focused, as well: Before Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan, there was another biracial royal couple. Who?

Duchess of Clerkenwell (Waller-Bridge) and Jimmy Jay Robinson, aka blaxploitation street poet Thunderstick (Thompson). Documentary footage includes Thunderstick “knighting” Sir Mix-A-lot.

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