Dave Chappelle walked away from a fifty-million dollar contract for his show on Comedy Central everyone thought he had lost his mind, but instead he had actually found it. Several years later, Chappelle explained in various interviews that he realized his racial humor was not changing problematic societal perceptions but rather reinforcing them (Cosgrove-Mather, 2006).
Discussing Chappelle’s revelation, Bostick (2010) clarified how the context of a joke must be understood in order for someone to actually get it. She says many people do not understand or appreciate black culture enough to make the necessary connections so they laugh at the joke based on face value rather than registering the hypocrisy, sarcasm or satire.
While jokes about black people by black people may not seem inappropriate; they advance bias depictions of African American traditions, behaviors and cultural norms while offering white people a license to laugh at those stereotypical images. (p. 276)
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In their research on Rush Hour 2, Park, Gabbadon, and Chernin (2006) found that comedy encourages audiences to naturalize racial differences rather than challenge racial stereotypes. Their findings suggested that many black and white viewers who actively consume comedy derive pleasure from racial jokes.
Racial stereotypes in comedy are problematic because they help validate racial differences through humor, thus rendering them natural and unchallengeable. Because racial stereotypes in comedy rarely offend the audiences and are presented in an enjoyable way, audiences are able to naturalize specific knowledge about racial minorities without resistance. (p. 173)
So, it is possible that the white crew member who made Dave Chappelle uncomfortable when he laughed at the sketch about “Black Pixies” (Farley, 2005) was not necessarily a racist, but he simply enjoyed a certain comfort level because of the way stereotypes have been naturalized in our society. It is possible with racial images and messages consistently perpetuated by the media and accepted in society a person does not have to be a racist to laugh at racial ideas or create racial content.
Hinton (2000) maintains that stereotypes reflect faulty thinking about a group or culture, and some people may not be aware because of the prominence and consistency of the humorously focused images and messages. This means that the active monitoring of our own cognitive process is necessary to create oppositional or counter-stereotypical strategies for the elimination of such stereotypes (Fiske, 1984).
As Entman (1992) discussed in his article on news, modern racism and cultural change it is easy for people to fall into stereotypical thinking, especially when normalized stereotypes are promoted consistently and intertextually.
Because old-fashioned racist images are socially undesirable, stereotypes are now more subtle and stereotyped thinking is reinforced at levels likely to remain below conscious awareness. Rather than the grossly demeaning distortions of yesterday, stereotyping of blacks now allows abstraction from and denial of the racial component. (p. 345)
Humor, fuels conversations, challenges assumptions, and stretches social boundaries often with stereotypical images and messages just under the surface. According to Amditis (2013), the continued use of racial stereotypes in humor today contributes to the preservation of the current racial hierarchy making the fight for a better racial climate more difficult.
The difficulty involved in identifying, processing, interpreting, comprehending, and retaining the subtle and symbolic undertones when exposed to humor is the key to understanding the ultimate harm that is done by the use of stereotypical tropes and tactics in comedy. (p. 5)
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Humor is usually based on stereotypical ideas and images. Stereotypes through humor provide easily recognized and understood historical impressions of how members of black culture might think and act. Unfortunately, when ethnic humor is based on normalized and accepted stereotypes racialism is involved and that means there is a problem with funny.
References
48 Hours. (1982). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083511/
Adams-Bass, V., Stevensen, H., & Korzin, D. (2014). Measuring the meaning of black media stereotypes and their relationship to the racial identity, black history knowledge, and racial socialization of African American youth. Journal of Black Studies, 45(5), 367–395.
Amditis, J. (2013, May). White men can’t joke: Racial hierarchy and traditional race narratives in humor and comedy. Retrieved from http:/www.academia.edu/3539690/White_Men_Cant_Joke_Racial_Hierarchy_And_Traditional_Race_Narratives_in_Humor_and_Comedy [Accessed 1 Apr].
Amos and Andy [TV Show]. (1951–1953). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043175/
Amos and Andy [Radio Show]. (1928–1955). Retrieved from https://www.amosandandy.org/
Another 48 Hours. (1990). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099044/
Apte, M. (1987). Ethnic humor vs. ‘sense of humor’: An American sociocultural dilemma. American Behavioral Scientist, 30, 27–41.
Banjo, O. (2011). What are you laughing at?: Examining white identity and enjoyment of black entertainment. Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media, 55(2), 137–159.
Banjo, O., Appiah, O., Wang, Z., Brown, C., & Walther, W. (2015). Co-viewing effects of ethnic oriented programming: An examination of in-group bias and racial comedy exposure. Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(3), 666–680.
Berg, M. (2016, September 27). The highest paid comedians 2016: Kevin Hart dethrones Jerry Seinfeld as cash king of comedy with $87.5 million payday. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2016/09/27/the-highest-paid-comedians-2016-kevin-hart-out-jokes-jerry-seinfeld-with-87-5-million-payday/#453270e7320e
Beverly Hills Cop series. (1984, 1987, 1994). IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092644/
Bogle, D. (1973/1989/1994/2001). Toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies and bucks: An interpretive history of blacks in films. New York, NY: Continuum & Bloomsbury.
Bostick, C. (2010). A barrel of laughs or a river of tears: The problem with African Americans using comedy to air dirty laundry in critical race perspectives. Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives, 2(2), 257–276.
Box Office Mojo. (2018, February 12). Kevin Hart. Retrieved from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/chart/?id=kevinhart.htm
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