Sacha Baron Cohen made an Arizona town seem racist
The city of Kingman, Ariz., wants you to know about its dazzling history along Route 66, the weekly farmers market with local produce and that its residents are not uniformly racist.
Kingman became the latest target for Sacha Baron Cohen’s social satire program on Showtime’s “Who Is America?” after a Sunday segment featured Cohen, posing as a member of a development firm, bringing together locals to comment on a multimillion-dollar project.
The gathering of at least 21 quickly learn the proposal: the world’s largest mosque outside the Middle East, Cohen explains in disguise at the front of the room. The mood sours. One man links the word mosque to terrorism. The mosque will bring problems, another explains. One man says black people aren’t welcome in town.
City officials were unhappy about the depiction and public outcry, of course, releasing a Facebook statement you would expect. There are criticisms of Cohen for “baiting” locals. It takes a shot at the show’s reach in a Trumpian insult of “very low ratings.” And every town has intolerant people, the city explains. But then, it takes a turn. Kingman says the segment led to a reckoning, and has spurred efforts to be more racially and religiously inclusive.
“But shrugging this off is not going to be us. We’re going to use this opportunity to keep moving our community forward with the help of many community stakeholders including the Kingman Interfaith Council,” the Tuesday statement said, signed by “City of Kingman, Arizona.”
“And while we’ve been making progress, the comments in the show, fairly or unfairly, show that we still have more work to do.”
Cohen’s brand of uncomfortable social criticism has already led to the resignation of Georgia State Rep. Jason Spencer after he dropped his pants and yelled obscenities on the show. He has also duped former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and former vice president Richard Cheney for his show.
Kingman has a population of just under 30,000, with nearly 89 percent identifying as white-only in a 2016 survey. The biggest minority population is Hispanic, a little more than a tenth of the population.
African-Americans have long been a minority, totaling just over 1 percent now.
In one of the most charged moments of the segment, the group forcefully pushes back against the idea of the mosque. Kingman cannot accept that, a man explains, because the town is “lucky to have black people in it.”
Cohen responds, “Of course you’re lucky to have black people, they add a lot to society.”