Kyle S. McKay’s Joke Was Racist, Lazy, and Beneath the Office

TLDR

Kyle S. McKay’s reported joke about “This Little Light of Mine” was not clever. It was not edgy. It was not a harmless old-man moment.

It was racist, lazy, and embarrassing.

The worst part is not only that the joke offended people. The worst part is that a senior church leader apparently thought racial imitation and slavery language belonged anywhere near a pulpit.

Bad Jokes Reveal Bad Assumptions

Every terrible joke has a little confession inside it.

The speaker may not mean to confess anything. He may think he is being charming, spontaneous, disarming, or funny. But jokes reveal what a person thinks is safe to say. They reveal what a person assumes the room will tolerate. They reveal which groups can be turned into shorthand.

That is why Kyle S. McKay’s reported joke about “This Little Light of Mine” deserves more than a polite wince.

It deserves blunt condemnation.

The joke was not just offensive. It was lazy. It reached for one of the oldest racial shortcuts available: white people performing Blackness. Then, according to the circulated account, it swerved into slavery language, as if that somehow made the story funnier or more spiritually useful.

It did not.

It made the whole thing uglier.

This was not a sophisticated point gone wrong. It was not a brave attempt at racial honesty that got misunderstood. It was not a delicate theological idea that critics flattened online.

It was a bad racial joke from a man who should know better.

“White People Trying to Sing Like Black People” Is Not a Thought

Let’s start with the basic frame.

The idea that a hymn becomes funny because white people are “trying to sing like black people” is not insight. It is not commentary. It is barely a joke.

It is racial flattening.

What does that even mean in practice? A certain rhythm? A certain tone? A certain church style? A certain emotional range? A certain stereotype about gospel music?

That is the problem. The joke depends on the listener already accepting a crude racial category. It takes a whole musical and spiritual tradition and reduces it to a caricature that white people can imitate.

That is lazy writing. Lazy speaking. Lazy thinking.

And yes, religious leaders should be judged for lazy thinking when it touches race. Especially from the pulpit.

A senior church leader does not need to be a musicologist. But he should know that Black sacred music is not a costume box. It is not a comic accent. It is not a style white people step into for a laugh and step out of when the meeting ends.

The Slavery Element Makes It Worse

The reported slavery language is where the joke crosses from merely clumsy into astonishingly bad.

Slavery is not a punchline.

That sentence should not need expansion, but apparently it does.

Slavery is not a vibe. It is not a colorful twist. It is not a way to explain why someone sings a song with extra feeling. It is not a little spice you add to an anecdote so the room stays engaged.

It is a history of kidnapping, forced labor, sexual violence, family separation, legal dehumanization, and generational harm.

So when a senior religious leader reportedly reaches for slavery language in a joke about a song with Black Christian roots, the issue is not that online critics are being dramatic. The issue is that the speaker showed a level of carelessness that should alarm anyone paying attention.

There are certain lines that a morally serious adult simply does not cross.

This was one of them.

The Joke Also Failed on Its Own Terms

Set aside, for one second, the moral issue.

Was the joke even good?

No.

It was hacky. It was awkward. It relied on racial shorthand instead of actual humor. It made the audience do the work of filling in the stereotype. That is usually how lazy jokes function: the speaker does not build a real idea, so he leans on the room’s existing baggage.

That is why this deserves the word lazy.

Good humor can expose hypocrisy. It can puncture pride. It can make people see themselves more honestly. It can even make hard truths easier to face.

This did none of that.

It did not reveal. It reduced.

It did not challenge. It leaned on a stereotype.

It did not bring people together. It made Black history available for white discomfort, white laughter, and white explanation.

That is bad humor. And when bad humor punches down, it is not just bad craft. It is bad character in public form.

The Pulpit Is Not Open Mic Night

There is something especially grating about bad jokes from religious leaders.

Not because religious leaders must be humorless. A little warmth can help. A human aside can make a talk feel less stiff. No one needs every church meeting to sound like a legal deposition.

But the pulpit is not open mic night.

A stake conference is not the place to workshop racial material. The congregation is not a comedy club audience. Black members and other people of color should not have to sit there wondering whether the man with authority over the room is about to turn their history into an anecdote.

Religious authority changes the power dynamic.

If a random person tells a bad joke, people can walk away. If a senior church leader tells a bad joke in a church meeting, members often feel pressure to sit quietly, laugh nervously, forgive quickly, and not make a scene.

That pressure is part of the harm.

The pulpit protects the speaker. It should not be used that way.

“He Was Just Joking” Is the Weakest Defense

The fastest way to identify a weak defense is to listen for the word “just.”

He was just joking.

It was just a story.

It was just a mistake.

It was just one moment.

That word does a lot of dishonest work.

A joke can still be racist. A story can still be degrading. A mistake can still reveal a serious lack of judgment. One moment can still matter when the person speaking holds high authority.

The fact that something was intended as humor does not make it harmless. In many cases, humor is exactly how ugly assumptions travel most easily. People laugh, and because they laughed, they tell themselves it cannot have been that bad.

But it can be that bad.

A racist joke does not become less racist because the speaker smiles.

The Room Matters Too

One reason jokes like this survive is that powerful people often speak to rooms trained to protect them.

A senior leader says something awkward. People laugh because the silence would be uncomfortable. They smile because disagreement would feel dangerous. They move on because religious culture often teaches members to smooth over the leader’s mistake rather than name it.

That is how the cycle continues.

The leader learns that the joke worked. The institution learns that no immediate correction is needed. The people most bothered by it learn, again, that they are expected to swallow the discomfort quietly.

Then, when the clip circulates later, defenders say critics are overreacting.

But the critics are often reacting to more than the joke. They are reacting to the whole system that lets the joke happen, protects the speaker, and asks everyone else to be charitable on command.

That is the bigger problem.

His Role Makes the Laziness Less Excusable

Kyle S. McKay is not a random fireside speaker. He is a General Authority Seventy and the Church Historian and Recorder.

That makes this worse.

A Church Historian should understand that songs have histories. He should understand that spiritual traditions are carried by communities. He should understand that race, slavery, and civil rights are not casual references to toss into a talk for color.

If anyone in the room should have felt the weight of “This Little Light of Mine,” it was him.

Instead, according to the circulated account, he chose the cheap route. He chose the racial shortcut. He chose the joke.

That choice matters.

No one forced him to say it. No one required that anecdote. No one needed that bit for the gospel message to survive.

He could have said nothing. He could have praised the song. He could have talked about light, courage, witness, discipleship, or collective faith. The hymn offers all of that freely.

He reached for race instead.

That is on him.

The Apology Cannot Be Vague

If there is an apology, it needs to be direct.

Not “I am sorry some were offended.”

Not “I regret that my remarks were misunderstood.”

Not “My words did not reflect what was in my heart.”

Those phrases are apology-shaped objects. They protect the speaker more than they repair the harm.

A real apology would say: the remarks were racist. The joke was wrong. The slavery reference was wrong. The song’s Black Christian and civil rights history deserved respect. Black members and others harmed by the remarks deserved better from a senior leader.

Then comes the harder part: consequence.

A man in McKay’s position should not get to make racially careless remarks, issue soft regret, and then slide back into full credibility as if nothing happened. That is not accountability. That is brand management with a religious vocabulary.

The Joke Was Small. The Problem Is Not.

It is tempting to call this a small thing because it was “just a joke.”

But small moments often show the truth with more clarity than official statements do.

Official statements are polished. Public apologies are reviewed. Institutional language is sanded down until every sharp edge disappears.

A joke is different. A joke is quick. A joke shows the reflex.

And this reflex was ugly.

It showed how easily Black sacred tradition could become a prop. It showed how quickly slavery language could enter the room. It showed how little weight the history seemed to have in the moment it mattered.

That is why people are angry.

Not because they hate humor. Not because they hate McKay personally. Not because they are looking for reasons to be offended.

They are angry because the joke revealed a failure that should not exist at that level of leadership.

Final Thoughts

Kyle S. McKay’s reported joke was racist. It was also lazy.

That second part matters because laziness is part of the offense. He did not carefully mishandle a complex idea. He reached for crude racial framing and reportedly dragged slavery into a church anecdote. That is not a tragic misunderstanding. It is a failure of moral imagination.

Senior religious leaders should be better than this.

Church historians should be better than this.

Anyone speaking from a pulpit should be better than this.

A hymn with Black Christian roots and civil rights weight deserved reverence. The people connected to that history deserved care. The congregation deserved leadership with enough judgment to avoid turning sacred memory into a cheap laugh.

McKay gave them less than that.

And that is why the criticism should be sharp.