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Anita Elash reports on Russell Peters, the Indian-born Canadian stand-up comic just named one of the ten highest-earning comedians in the world. His humor is not politically correct, often making fun of various ethnic groups.

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KATY CLARK: Have you heard the one about the man who earned $10 million dollars last year telling ethnic jokes?  That would be Russell Peters.  According to Forbes magazine, he’s one of the highest-earning comedians in the world.  The Indian-born Canadian has made his way to the top by tearing into his own and other cultures.  Reporter Anita Elash went to a Russell Peters performance in Toronto.

ANITA ELASH:  Thousands of people fill a city block in downtown Toronto to hear Peters’ special brand of ethnic comedy.

PETERS:  Last weekend was a very significant holiday for Indian people – it was July 11.  And it’s a very big holiday for my people because that’s 7-Eleven.

ELASH:  Peters always begins his routine with jokes about Indians.  But by the time he’s finished, pretty much no race or ethnic group is left standing.

PETERS:  Black people – I see there are black people everywhere, okay.  Let’s keep the gunshots to a minimum.

ELASH:  Peters is not what you’d call politically correct.  And that’s a big part of the appeal for this audience.  Most of them are brown-skinned, too.

WOMAN:  I love him.  You feel so much at home when he tells those jokes because we crack those jokes all the time back home.

MAN:  At the beginning he introduced us about jokes about his culture, and then he make jokes about everybody at the same level, and we like that.  We like to know about things that we are wrong on it.

ELASH:  Ethnic humor is nothing new on the comedy club circuit.  Here’s comedian Pat Paulson in black-face, on the Smothers Brothers show back in 1974.

PAULSON:  I really think it’s terrible what’s happening in this country.  Jokes they make about minorities.  I’d like to give you some examples of this bigoted humor.  You know what caused the California earthquake.  They buried a Polak and the earth rejected him.

ELASH:  More recently, comics like Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia made millions poking fun at stereotypes of blacks and Latinos.  Peters told jokes about Indians and other immigrants for 15 years before he got his first taste of fame.  Five years ago, one of his performances went viral on YouTube.  Since then, he’s become the leader of what some call the third path in comedy.  Not white or black, but brown.  And he’s opened the way for a whole new stream of ethnic comic.  Mark Breslin is the founder of the comedy club chain Yuk Yuk’s.

BRESLIN:  What you have to remember is that Russell has achieved this level of fame without first becoming a movie star or a TV star, and that makes his level of achievement even more amazing.  What it says to me is the incredible level of need for a voice of a people.  And that’s what Russell has become.  He’s become the voice of a people who have been denied, an active voice in global culture until now.

ELASH:  Peters says he didn’t set out to become the comedic voice of brown people. He grew up in an immigrant neighborhood just outside Toronto.  So he was just telling the jokes that came most naturally.

PETERS:  When I started doing this 20 years ago, I was the first Indian guy.  People weren’t ready yet.  Immigrants were still new in ’89, and immigrants are now more settled in and they’re more comfortable with their position.  And then they see someone who looks like not the norm, and they want to hear what this guy has to say.

ELASH:  This audience can’t seem to get enough of it.

PETERS:  I always think we should have an Indian ice hockey team.  That’s what I think we need.  They would be like the Toronto Maple Sikhs and they’d be incredible, and they wouldn’t wear helmets.  Just blue and white turbans.

ELASH:  Peters says he’s looking forward to a new kind of comedian, the brown guy who people will laugh at even if he doesn’t tell a single ethnic joke.  For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.

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