It’s becoming increasingly apparent that a lot of people want to hear it that way. 

This summer’s box-office numbers for such rollicking comedies of color as “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps,” “Big Momma’s House” and the Wayans brothers’ “Scary Movie,” which bagged the biggest R-rated opening in movie history, clearly indicate that the general-audience drawing power of black comedy films can no longer be underestimated by the Hollywood studios. And with this weekend’s release of two hilariously outspoken new comedy concert movies - the Spike Lee-directed “The Original Kings of Comedy” and Margaret Cho’s independently produced “I’m the One That I Want” - the stand-up spotlight is about to cast a more inclusive arc as well. 

Uproariously candid and loaded with raw language, these are not goody-two-shoes performances by any measure, but the humor is good enough to win over all but the most uptight general audiences. 

For the comics, it’s time to laugh all the way to the bank, especially when the time comes to ring up video receipts - both live tours drew huge repeat audiences, and movie audiences are likely to come back for more, as well, wanting to hear the lines they laughed through the first time. Both movies showcase stand-up talents with big enough reps to be considered insiders by now - comedy kings Steve Harvey and D.L. Hughley are TV sitcom stars already; Cho’s precocious stand-up success and short-lived sitcom stardom has made her a household name - but Hollywood wasn’t exactly betting the bank on them. 

Breakthrough comedy shows including “In Living Color,” “Def Comedy Jam” and BET’s “Comic View” have launched a generation of black comics into sitcom and movie stardom, but “we’re still outsiders in so many ways,” said Cedric the Entertainer, speaking by phone amid a crush of promo interviews (“It is goin’ on around here! You’d think I was running the Democratic National Convention.”) 

Like his buddies on the record-breaking Kings of Comedy tour (with ticket sales exceeding $37 million, the biggest grossing comedy tour of all time), Cedric had been selling out theaters on his own for years. But still, he said, “we always have to prove ourselves first, before we get any credit, even in the sense of this movie. Paramount had to do things like test it in four markets before they would even talk about releasing it in more than 500 theaters. We tested very well and had very little dropoff in the second week, and these are the things that gave them faith. They were believers, but not true believers. That’s what makes you feel like an outsider. When you know you’re successful, you have the numbers to prove they’ll show up, and you still have to prove your point.” 

Jonathon Gates, the Boston comedian who started the city’s only black-comedy showcase, the Black Comedy Explosion, at the Comedy Connection two years ago, has had similar experiences on the local scene. “To be honest with you, when I started 11 years ago, it was definitely racist,” he said. “They didn’t want to let me in. I had to go out and force myself on them. They wanted me to do their type of comedy - Seinfeld comedy.” 

Gates calls Boston “the worst” city in the country for showcasing black comic talent, but he concedes that things are getting better, thanks mainly to more open-minded audiences. “Now every day, black and white people are shoulder to shoulder, crossing over, I’m enjoying your stuff, you’re enjoying mine,” he said. 

And the stars of “The Original Kings of Comedy,” most of whom Gates has opened for in clubs, are proof that “black comedy is one of the hottest things going right now,” Gates said. The tour finally comes to Boston’s FleetCenter Oct. 6. 

In the four sidesplitting sets by Cedric, Harvey, Hughley and Bernie Mac (a major name in urban comedy who has yet to achieve mainstream fame), the comics do little to deliberately court crossover crowds. If each of their sets makes use of the old “differences between white folks and black folks” premise, it’s just a way to welcome everybody into black cultural scenarios, Cedric said. 

“We use it mainly to spell out the scene,” he said. “We all try to be culturally diverse and say and do the right things, but you have to recognize that there’s black communities and white communities. You talk about things in that manner to set up what your race does.” 

Some of this stuff, surely, is stereotypical enough to make a white liberal’s skin crawl. But the repeat black audiences who made the tour’s two-year run a blockbuster weren’t offended by jokes about brushing off bill collectors (“I know 6-year-olds with their name on the lease.” - Harvey), disciplining kids (“If he grown enough to talk back, he grown enough to get (messed) up.” - Bernie Mac) and following Tiger Woods onto white golf courses in droves (“We’ll be out there barbecuing and wearing Timberlands.” - Cedric the Entertainer). 

The live audience, said Cedric, was “predominantly African-American for sure,” but over time a mixed crowd started to find its way to the show. He believes the crossover potential for the movie is huge. “We were packing fans in the seats way back in the beginning of this tour. Now, with all the publicity that comes with this movie, we can really open it up to everybody.” 

Margaret Cho’s concert movie represents another kick-in-the-pants to the status quo. 

Last weekend’s preview run in only five theaters netted $237,574 - already returning two-thirds of its production budget. In its opening weekend in New York and Los Angeles, it had the highest per screen average of any film in the country. The film’s distribution is limited by the number of prints (they made only 10); every theater it’s been shown in so far has asked for an extended run. 

“The Hollywood machine doesn’t work for someone like me,” said Cho, whose trials as an outsider in the Hollywood system provide the central plot line for the show’s screamingly funny but sincere story of self-actualization. Asian-American, female and chubbier than the standard sitcom beanpole, Cho said she got canned from her landmark “All-American Girl” series, in which she was supposed to be playing herself, for being too fat, too Asian, not Asian enough. Along the way, at the urging of network execs, she crash-dieted her way to kidney failure. Toward the end, as she tells it in the film, they were bringing in “Asian consultants” to instruct her on the use of chopsticks and the abacus. 

Does the early success of the independently produced “I’m the One That I Want” constitute the revenge of an outsider? 

“I don’t like to look at it as revenge,” said Cho. “I think there’s a Chinese saying that if you seek revenge, you should dig two graves. I’m not out to indict Hollywood or burn any bridges. I think that for me the most important thing is that I’ve learned to trust my own voice. I had to find that out through incredible trauma. All this horrible stuff happened to me through trusting the system, and wanting to be part of it. When I realized I couldn’t, that it would kill me if I kept trying, that’s when I had this revelation that I had to do it for myself.” 

Cho’s audience, she said, is “basically people who feel like they don’t fit in, who are not that psyched by what is out there in the media and don’t feel it’s a mirror of their lives. There are a lot of people of color, a lot of women, gays and lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders, mixed-race couples, even really young people.” 

Having turned her tale of redemption into a comedy triumph, Cho won’t be wasting any more time trying to fit into somebody else’s idea of normal. She has a book coming out in the spring, and she’s already writing a new show that she’ll take on a club tour in the fall before a big theater tour in the spring. So far, the new show (at the Comedy Connection Dec. 8 and 9) will include “a lot of stuff about drag queens and growing up (on Polk Street in San Francisco),” she said. 

Although both shows will have dedicated a lot of time to gay culture, she’s not worried about being pigeonholed as “the fag-hag comic,” Cho said. “A lot of the shows I write for my friends, the people I love, so to write a show that really speaks to my community is very honest and real to me. And it gets more normal as you make it more normal, make it so that straight people can come and hear about gay and lesbian issues and not have it feel like they’re going on a special little vacation. It’s a normal thing to hear about all human experience and acknowledge the universality of it.”