I remember when I first saw Whoopi Goldberg doing standup, and

“I remember when I first saw Whoopi Goldberg doing standup, and she was wearing a sheet on her head, basically pretending to be this little white girl with long luxurious blonde hair. Everyone can relate to that. It’s an oral history of black women’s lives through laughter.” Thus spoke Mickalene Thomas, the painter and visionary whose art celebrates the power, beauty, and complexity of Black womanhood. In this recollection, Thomas captures more than a memory — she captures a revelation. The sight of Whoopi Goldberg, cloaked in humor yet wielding truth, was not merely comedy; it was cultural storytelling, the act of reclaiming dignity through the art of laughter. Her words remind us that even in jest, there can be history, resistance, and healing.

When Thomas recalls that moment, she speaks not as a spectator, but as a witness to a sacred performance — the kind of truth that slips past defenses and enters the soul disguised as laughter. For Goldberg, wearing a sheet to mimic long blonde hair was not mockery, but a mirror. It reflected the deep yearning, familiar to many Black girls, to see themselves in a world that worshiped a beauty that was not theirs. Through humor, Goldberg exposed this longing, not to shame it, but to transform it into understanding. Her comedy became confession; her performance, a parable. And those who laughed did not laugh only from amusement — they laughed from recognition, from release, from the collective memory of struggle softened by joy.

The origin of this quote lies in the roots of Black artistic tradition, where laughter has long been a weapon and a refuge. For centuries, when words of protest could mean punishment, humor carried truth where plain speech could not. It was through storytelling, through satire and mimicry, that Black people spoke their pain, preserved their wisdom, and shared their survival. From the folktales of Br’er Rabbit to the brilliance of Richard Pryor and the eloquence of Goldberg, comedy became an oral history — a living, breathing archive of what it meant to exist, resist, and rise in a world of constraint. Thomas, herself an artist of image and form, recognizes this lineage. She sees Goldberg’s standup not merely as performance, but as testament — a visual and verbal inheritance passed down through humor.

This tradition echoes through the ages, in other lands and other struggles. In ancient Athens, the playwright Aristophanes wielded comedy to challenge tyranny; in the medieval courts, jesters mocked kings under the veil of wit. Yet in the story of Black America, laughter took on a sacred dimension — it was survival disguised as joy. It was the way to hold one’s humanity when the world sought to deny it. When Whoopi donned that sheet and embodied that little girl, she was both exposing and exorcising — revealing the pain of assimilation while reclaiming the freedom to define herself on her own terms. Her humor became art, her art became history, and her history became healing.

In Mickalene Thomas’s eyes, this moment represents more than performance; it represents connection — the shared emotional language that links the personal to the universal. “Everyone can relate to that,” she says, because while the details may differ, the longing to belong, to be seen, to be loved for who we are, is part of the human condition. And yet, for Black women, that longing carries a double weight — to exist both as individual and symbol, as muse and maker, as subject and storyteller. Goldberg’s humor, like Thomas’s art, refuses to separate these roles. Instead, it embraces the fullness of Black womanhood — its vulnerability, its defiance, its grace.

There is a quiet heroism in this — the courage to turn one’s lived experience into art that uplifts others. Just as Goldberg transformed pain into laughter, so too does Thomas transform the gaze itself, painting Black women as radiant, unapologetic, and divine. Both women, in their own ways, reframe the narrative — they teach us that beauty and strength are not given by the world, but reclaimed from it. Their works are not about imitating power, but redefining it — showing that to laugh, to create, to endure, is itself an act of sovereignty.

So let this lesson endure in the hearts of all who listen: art is not only what we see or hear, but what we survive. Laughter can be a language of liberation, a way to speak truth when silence is demanded. Do not dismiss joy as frivolity; it is rebellion in its most radiant form. Like Goldberg on stage, like Thomas before her canvas, use your gifts not for glory, but for truth-telling — to honor your story, your ancestors, and your people. For the artist’s task is not only to create beauty, but to remember, to carry forward the unwritten history of the soul.

And thus, as Mickalene Thomas teaches, every laugh, every brushstroke, every act of creation can be an offering — a piece of the great oral history of humanity. When we turn our pain into art, our art into laughter, and our laughter into connection, we become more than survivors; we become storytellers of light, carrying forward the memory of those who came before us and illuminating the path for those yet to come.