Students blast Steve Martin’s King Tut skit as racist

The student called the performance, which includes African-Americans clad in faux ancient Egyptian attire, as racist.

“The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface,” the incensed student told The Atlantic.

In the skit, which Martin created in 1978, he performs a goofy song, “King Tut,” meant to satirize a Tutankhamun exhibit touring the US from 1976 to 1979, and to assail the commercialization of Egyptian culture.

Freshmen taking Humanities 110, which is designed for students “to engage in original, open-ended, critical inquiry,” said they should not be forced to take the required course until different coursework is offered.

Members of RAR, which was created to mourn the deaths of blacks at the hands of police nationwide, say Hum 110 is all about oppression.

“We believe that the first lesson that freshmen should learn about Hum 110 is that it perpetuates white supremacy—by centering ‘whiteness’ as the only required class at Reed,” according to a RAR statement provided to all new freshmen.

Hum 110 “feels like a cruel test for students of color,” one leader said on public radio, according to the mag. “It traumatized my peers.”

Reed Professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who identifies herself as a gay mixed-race woman, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on her experiences with the protesters.

“The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices,” she wrote. “Some colleagues, including people of color, immigrants and those without tenure, found it impossible to work under these conditions.

“The signs intimidated faculty into silence, just as intended,” wrote Martínez Valdivia, who said she has suffered from a “lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite, inability to focus.”

The school has reportedly been trying to revise its course to address RAR’s concerns, but students have stopped showing up to meetings designed to do so, according to the Washington Examiner.

In the “SNL” skit, Martin said he thought the boy king exhibit was “a national disgrace the way we have commercialized it with trinkets and toys, T-shirts and posters.”

“Now, if I’d known they’d line up just to see you, I’d trade in all my money and bought me a museum. (King Tut) buried with a donkey (Funky Tut) He’s my favorite honky!” he and his band sang.