Politics & Power Quote by Dick Gregory

The joke lands like a gut check because it’s built on the clean, familiar ladder of American aspiration: athlete, entertainer, then the real punchline - citizen. Dick Gregory starts with two culturally approved routes for a Black man to be “great” in mid-century America, both public, both consumable, both safely legible to white audiences. Sports and showbiz are the classic escape hatches the country offers when it won’t widen the door.

He undercuts them with a comedian’s surgical phrasing: “we were wrong” and “that wasn’t it either.” Not “I failed,” but “that wasn’t it” - as if the problem isn’t talent but the premise. The subtext is that greatness, as defined by mainstream America, is a rigged category. Even when you win, you’re still performing inside someone else’s expectations.

Then Gregory pivots to “American Citizen. First class,” a phrase that sounds almost patriotic until you hear the acid in it. Citizenship isn’t supposed to come in classes; the very need to specify “first class” exposes the second-class reality Black Americans were assigned by law, custom, and violence. In the civil rights era context - Gregory wasn’t just telling jokes, he was fundraising, marching, getting arrested - this is a mission statement disguised as self-deprecation. He’s rejecting the consolation prizes and claiming the radical ambition: not fame, not applause, but full belonging, with receipts.