Yashere: TV's racism drove me to the US

'It's not the same for black comics'

Gina Yashere says she has quit Britain because of TV’s racist attitudes towards black comedians.

She says: ‘Most white comedians who can sell out theatres the way I do would have their own TV show by now, but it's not the same for black comics.’

So she said she moved to Los Angeles before her frustration with TV executives turned into bitterness.

Yashere, who embarks on a UK tour today, told the Guardian: ‘Britain is still 15 or 20 years behind America as far as black performers are concerned; there is still a very tokenistic attitude.

‘I am mainstream, but the powers-that-be in television are still white middle-class men and they look at me and they don't see mainstream; they see black woman first.

‘Why are black comics all fighting for that one TV show? And if that one person gets a TV show the rest of us feel like we've been passed over for promotion? Jocelyn Jee Esien gets her show, and because she's got a TV show I know that I'm never going to get one, because they've got their "black female comedian" token slot filled.

‘They look at us all the same, and yet they can have 100 white blokes on TV at one time and it's still not enough. I'm frustrated, and I know if I'd stayed in England I would have become bitter, and that's why I've left. I don't want to be bitter, I'm a happy person.’

Yashere moved to the States last summer, after appearing on the NBC reality show Last Comic Standing. She since became the first British comic to appear the influential black stand-up show Def Comedy Jam. Here is her performance on the show: