I always thought it was silly, but on today's episode ( my husband watched), in my opinion showed the subtle racism that some people don't realize exists in themselves.
There was a skit that mentioned President Obama. A woman asked what a black thing was in the distance and all the men told him to say that it was Obama, then cracked up as usual. Not funny.
This is evidently how they speaks around each other and wherever they go. They may have not realized how insulting that was. If that's the case, we all better check ourselves before we say, hey, I'm not a racist!