A Black Woman Blacklisted by White People

DEI dissident Karith Foster is laughing all the way

Karith Foster at the “Can We Take a Joke?” premiere party at the world famous Comedy Cellar in New York in 2015.

Karith Foster is a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) trainer, but she’s not that kind of DEI trainer. 

Imagine speaking freely at a diversity workshop. Imagine laughing. Imagine leaving the workshop feeling more connected to your colleagues and associates. 

If you can imagine all of that, you can imagine how Foster’s approach to diversity is different from what you’ll find at most universities and corporations. 

Foster isn’t that kind of DEI trainer, and she’s not just a DEI trainer. 

She’s many other things, including a hilarious standup comedian. 

I first met Foster in the mid 2000s while I was helping my comedian brother and Greg Giraldo biographer Matty “Ballgame” Balaker produce a comedy show on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. 

There was Foster, performing alongside the likes of Tom Segura, Christina P, and Joe Rogan. 

She’d riff on her childhood as a black girl in a very white neighborhood, and whether they were comedy snobs or tourists, she’d make audience members feel closer to her and each other. She’d make them laugh and make them think.

Foster had the same effect on audiences in “Can We Take a Joke?”, the 2016 feature documentary my wife and I made, which features Foster alongside the likes of Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, and narrator Christina P. 

Although she’s locked in an ongoing clash with the DEI establishment, Foster still manages to take the “divide” out of diversity training at universities and corporations all across the United States and Europe. 

In this interview, I ask my friend about groupthink in the DEI world, how her “INVERSITY™” approach is different, and what it’s like to be a black woman blacklisted by white people. 

TED BALAKER: How would you contrast your approach to DEI training with the usual approach?

KARITH FOSTER: I call what I do INVERSITY™. And so, you know, obviously it’s different than the word diversity but even the word diversity as a root of it, it has division. And divide. And that's part of the problem.

You know, we're still dividing each other up. We're still putting ourselves in categories that are forcing us to feel like we're not connected. So INVERSITY™

is shifting the focus from what separates and divides us to what we have in common. 

Another thing that sets it apart is being introspective. Going inside and understanding your value, your worth, your connections to humanity. Because when you can see those things in yourself, that’s when you can see them in other people. 

In traditional DEI, we're always talking about outside factors. But guess what? Change has to start with you. That means stepping up to the plate with personal responsibility and deciding how much you're going to let someone else's words, thoughts, ideas affect you and how you see yourself.

TB: From the outside looking in, it seems like the DEI approach that emphasizes dividing people is the overwhelming choice among universities and corporations. If you had to guess and put a percentage on how common that approach is, what would you say? 

KF: Oh I would say nearly all of it. Almost 100%.

TB: Wow.

KF: Because nobody has ever rocked the boat. It’s always been an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” thing. Well it is broke. It’s been broken for a long time.

TB: It seems like DEI workshops can be kind of tense—people walking on eggshells, that sort of thing. And I imagine that somebody who comes in with a comedy background would be better able to put people at ease and help create richer conversations. 

KF: Absolutely. I mean, there's no question that when you can make people laugh, when you can make a situation not feel so heavy handed, you're changing the air.

And it's almost like it's flip flopped a little bit now, like you're only considered valuable in a DEI conversation if you’re quote-unquote “diverse.” 

Wait a second. How is it that we are going to have everybody come to the table and be included, if now what we're saying is, “You don't have a voice in this conversation because of who you happen to be?”

But at the same time, you’re more valuable the more quote-unquote “diverse” you are. I mean, if you're a gay amputee, bipolar, and you’re black, you're a rockstar in the world of DEI. You win. You get the trophy. And that's insane. That’s who you are. But that shouldn’t make you better or worse than anyone else. 

We’ve gone from  one extreme to the other, and it can be a really wonderful place to be in the middle. And comedy can help us get there. Comedy points out the absurdity of things and of life. And what is more absurd than not liking someone because they have a better tan than you? 

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TB: Tell me about the episode involving a certain California college.

KF: Sure. I had a professor reach out to me who had seen me in “Can We Take a Joke?”— and “Can We Take a Joke?” was like the powder keg that blew INVERSITY™ into the atmosphere. 

So when he saw the documentary and he saw what I was doing, he thought it was perfect, and he was very interested in bringing me to his college campus.

It was just like, “Let me get this set up, and we’ll choose a date.”

TB: So it sounds like he figured it was a done deal. 

KF: Oh, Yeah. 

And then I reached out to him a couple months later, and he was, like, “I hate to say this to you, Karith, but you're unofficially blacklisted. You're on a list.”

The people above him at the college didn’t like the way I speak about these things and didn’t like my appearances on Fox News. My messaging was not in line with how they wanted to approach things. That’s why I'm not welcome.

TB: Were these mostly white administrators making this decision?

KF: Yes. Yes.

TB: So can you just reflect on that?

KF: The irony is that the people aren't people of color, but feel that they know what people of color need more than anyone else. They are the people making the decisions. 

And then there are a lot of people who maybe feel that it's inappropriate or wrong, but they don't want to  speak up for themselves, for fear of being canceled or being told that they're not black enough or Hispanic enough or gay enough or minority enough. 

The more that you celebrate victimhood, it shows how much more evolved you’re supposed to be. And yet it’s actually a de-evolution in how we should be treating one another.

TB: Are you worried about the blacklist in terms of getting hired at other universities and corporations?

KF: It's disconcerting. I want to be like “Haters gonna hate,” but there's more than that. 

Because there certainly is a segment of the population, especially in academia, that seems hellbent on delivering this messaging in a particular way, you know, pointing out how wrong people who are privileged are. 

It’s almost like the worse they can make people feel, the better job they’re doing.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker whose recent work includes “Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn,” “Can We Take a Joke?” featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a forthcoming feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

Featured comedian Karith Foster and director Ted Balaker promote “Can We Take a Joke?” at the Washington DC-area morning show Wake Up Washington.