There is a stampede to the door of the comedian Ali G. An anti-racist clutch of black comedians have deemed him racist.

Ali G is a stage name for Sacha Baron-Cohen, a Jewish student educated at Cambridge University. He lampoons the street culture of young blacks, and this centres around peculiar hand movements and street slang with many references to violence and drugs. It is the language of the semi-literate. The black comedians and some of their supporters accuse Ali G of stereotyping the black street youth and disrespecting (dissing) their culture.

One of the ethnic weeklies polled the black community. Eighty-six per cent are fans of Ali G. They agree he is remarkably funny, but there are several interpretations of what he actually does. Some say he is taking off Asian kids who slavishly imitate black culture. Some say he is an Asian taking the piss out of black culture. Some say he is a white boy taking the mickey out of whites (wiggers) who imitate young blacks. None of these can be proven because Ali G doesn't give interviews.

When blacks first arrived in England, humour was a way of keeping us in our place. There were jokes about miscegenation, monkeys and banana-chewing gorillas. Some black comedians went along with it all, playing up to the stereotypes. The current crop of black comedians, however, tends to crack jokes about whites, and these lack authenticity, just as the jokes about blacks did.

Baron-Cohen, once an activist in the Young Jewish Socialist Movement, is something quite different. He assumes a Muslim name, Ali. Then he wears one of those tight-fitting stocking hats, which is a mix of the Muslim taj, the Jewish yarmulka and the black unemployed headgear, the tam-o'-shanter. He drips in jewellery, which is both a Jewish thing and a black thing. Without saying a word, he thus reflects all the similarities of these marginalised groups - the dress, the excessive hand movements and the body postures.

He wraps himself around the culture of conflicting groups in society and looks at them through the prism of race. He is all of them and none of them. He is a salesman, equally of salt-beef sandwiches and kilos of marijuana. He wears the sovereign gold ring and, I suspect, the Star of David, too.

Where alternative comedy attracts titters, Ali G's audiences explode in laughter from the gut. He is absolutely authentic in his parody of black street kids. He achieves this because all marginalised groups distinguish themselves with particular, quite exaggerated ways of dress and speech - Jew, Arab, West Indian, Asian. He also lived close to Asian and West Indian communities and went to school with them.

When black comedians try to imitate whites, they nearly always reflect their own prejudices of who whites are, as opposed to immersing themselves in the character. They evoke wry smiles, embarrassed giggles, as opposed to huge belly-laughs. Ali G seems to immerse himself in Brixton (and, I think, Southall) as effortlessly as he immerses himself in Tottenham, and as a consequence mobilises the guts of his audience. Each group recognises something of itself.

Part of the hostility to him is that he hunts on the terrain of the black comedians and pulls it off much better than they can. He can do that because he sees what the various cultures have in common, rather than what makes them separate and hostile to each other. That is the hallmark of a great comedian. The anti-racist stance of other comedians is just petty jealousy. Richard Blackwood, one of those who signed up to this anti- Ali G sentiment, once caught my eye and that of Channel 4. But always I felt he lacked something. I'm able to see it now when Ali G appears. The word is universality.

"The White Tribe", a three-part documentary presented and written by Darcus Howe, is showing on Channel 4 on Thursdays at 9pm

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