How White Racist Humor Reveals the Myth of Post-Racialism
By Raúl Pérez
During moments of uncertainty, political polarization, and escalating social and racial conflict, it is common to hear that humor and laughter may be an effective antidote to the stress, anxiety, and frustration that becomes widespread during such trying times. “Laughter is the best medicine,” is often a common refrain. Yet, what happens when humor and laughter are used to aggravate, rather than alleviate, racial conflict?
When it comes to understanding racism, there is a tendency to emphasize the role that negative emotions, like anger and hatred, play in reinforcing racial divisions. The reality is that racist fun and amusement has long played a significant role in normalizing and reproducing racism in society, past and present (Pérez 2016). As a sociologist who studies the social and cultural impact of racist humor, I have closely examined how and why racist humor has been used in both historical and contemporary social contexts.
Humor is a pleasurable social experience that is used to bring people closer together. Forging social bonds is what humanizes us. But racist humor adds another dimension to this social experience, one that brings people together in the act of dehumanizing others. In this way, racist humor and laughter work to generate social solidarity and cohesion while simultaneously reinforcing existing racial hierarchies, boundaries, and power relations, in both conscious and unconscious ways.
In a white dominated society like the U.S., racist humor has long been used by whites across ethnic, religious, and class divides, in ways that have allowed whites to generate social and racial affiliation (in-group), while creating greater social distance against dehumanized non-whites (out-group). This is clearly illustrated in the history of blackface minstrelsy, the most popular form of entertainment of the pre-civil rights U.S. The legacy of blackface shows how whites generated a collective pleasure that elevated a sense of whiteness, regardless of economic and cultural divides, through the shared ridicule of blackness and black suffering. This process is reflective of what sociologist W.E.B Du Bois referred to as the “public and psychological wages of whiteness,” or the ego-boost that whites get from feeling that they are racially superior to the non-whites who they cast as racially inferior, even when the material realities, interests and needs of lower class whites are often similar to those of non-whites.
But even after such humor was deemed “racist” and socially unacceptable in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, racist humor remained a popular source of group pleasure among whites throughout society. In the post-civil rights era, racist humor became a “forbidden fruit” that was now indulged by whites in private settings (among friends, family, or co-workers) (Picca and Feagin 2007), while it was increasingly mined by humorists and comedians who learned how to strategically deliver racist content in seemingly “non-racist” ways (Pérez 2013). For instance, the notion of the “equal opportunity offender,” the idea that mocking “everyone” was a safe and democratic way to engage in insult and fun, is an idea that only arose in the post-civil rights era. But rather than serving some egalitarian principle, it allowed white entertainers to once again use racist jokes, slurs and content, and profit from them, in ways that were supposedly prohibited in this new “politically correct” context.
While social norms and policies against racial harassment and discrimination did arise within various organizations to curb its use, the use of racist humor and ridicule has remained in virtually every social context and institution I have examined, and is revealed just by scratching beneath the surface. Take, for instance, the racist jokes that police officers share with each other behind the scenes on their police radios, cell phones, or social media groups (Pérez and Ward 2019). This practice also continues to take place on college campuses, in workplaces, on the internet, among far-right and white supremacist groups, and in the political arena (Pérez 2017).
In other words, the use of racist humor exists not in some bygone past or merely at the social margins, but it remains an ordinary and everyday social practice that contributes to “common sense” understandings of race and racism in society. And its widespread use in both private and public contexts, among lay-people, entertainers, and those with social, political and legal power, illustrates just how shallow and mythical the notions of “color-blindness” and “post-racialism” have really been all along. Clearly, not all forms of laughter and humor are “medicine” or “just jokes.” Sometimes, they are social poison.
Article Details
Racism without Hatred? Racist Humor and the Myth of “Colorblindness”
Raúl Pérez
First Published August 2, 2017 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/0731121417719699
Sociological Perspectives
About the Author
