Boyles promoted video featuring physical attacks and ethnic slurs against “Mexicans”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

During the April 25 broadcast of his 630 KHOW-AM show, host Peter Boyles directed listeners to a YouTube video (registration required because of “inappropriate” content) featuring “a guy who calls himself, interestingly enough, 'The Amazing Racist.' ” Boyles explained that " 'The Amazing Racist' ... [g]oes down to his truck at a day labor spot, gets all the Mexicans standing outside, offers them, 'Here it is, fifty bucks for a day's work,' and then drives them to ICE," referring to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Boyles added that “it's really something to see” and attempted to play the audio of the clip on the air before an unidentified person cut him off by saying, “That's not what you want.”

According to the website Tolerance.org, which is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Amazing Racist” is Ari Shaffir, a Los Angeles comedian who “specializes in what he calls 'racial comedy,' purposely offending his subjects for laughs.” The site reported that the video, released in May 2005 and titled “Beaners,” was a “so-called joke, staged for the sake of comedy. And the Mexican workers were paid to appear in the clip.”

In addition to showing Shaffir driving “Mexicans” to ICE, the video features Shaffir repeatedly using racist language and promoting offensive racial stereotypes. For example, in one segment, Shaffir and an accomplice throw oranges at a man while calling him a “beaner” and telling him to “go eat some rice and tacos.” Another segment shows Shaffir touching a Latino man's back and exclaiming, “It's wet, it's a wetback, it's true,” and calling several restaurant workers “spics.”

In promoting the video, Boyles did not mention that it reportedly is a comedy sketch.

From the April 25 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

BOYLES: I was mentioning earlier, I got a call from a friend who said, “You gotta watch this thing -- what these guys are doing” -- and there's a video on YouTube of a guy who calls himself, interestingly enough, “The Amazing Racist.” Goes down to his truck at a day labor spot, gets all the Mexicans standing outside, offers them, “Here it is, fifty bucks for a day's work,” and then drives them to ICE. And -- it's really something to see. It can be found easily; just go to YouTube, so if we can do this -- no?

UNIDENTIFIED: That's not what you want.

BOYLES: No? And do this. All right -- I don't know.