A young blond white woman enters an elevator. The next floor, a young black man wearing a suit enters soon after. The elevator closes. The white woman grabs her purse for dear life. As she clutches to whatever money she may have, the black man begins to speak to the audience about the constant racism a black man faces upon entering an elevator. He explains that she may think he doesn’t notice but, he does and “it makes me want to snatch the f**king purse out of your hand and beat your racist ass to the ground,“ he retorts angrily. But rather than resorting to the stereotypical racism expected of him, he takes the higher road ... and “boos” her, consequently scaring the crap out of her, causing her to instinctively offer him her purse for a second.

This is Reckless Tortuga, the sketch comedy group that is blowing up all over youtube and facebook. When I first saw this video and the whole “Racism in the USA” series. I cracked up and sadly enough upon watching the crew’s hilarious videos, I couldn’t help but feel sad because I could relate to his situation. Though I did not directly relate to the elevator video, I did relate to “Racism in a Car” video. This video discussed the infamous move where a white person sees a black person and immediately rolls up his or her windows and locks their doors. Other videos include “Racism at the Bus Stop” and “The Blind Date.“ Each time when something inappropriate happens, protagonist Eric Pumphrey stops to say the thing that no one says but every minority is thinking. Soon after, he comes to a resolve that makes the appropriate, hilarious action usually resulting in chaos.

Reckless Tortuga is an independent sketch comedy group consisting of director, Jason Schnell along with actors and writers Lindsey Reckis, Eric Pumphrey and Rachel Miner. According to the recklesstortuga.com site, they started their group “one weekend because we wanted to make some funny videos.“ They sat down, wrote a few PSAs and shot them soon after. “Since then we have become addicted to making sketch videos.“ This group has a lot of talent and I look forward to their next videos. Check them out but I warn people who do not relate to this or are guilty of this, you will probably become hugely paranoid … which might be for the better.