Raúl Pérez

This article examines racially derogatory police jokes, what we call “racist blue humor,” as discourse that negatively targets and ridicules racial and ethnic minorities as inferior, dangerous, or as objects of symbolic and cultural violence. We argue that racist blue humor fosters the social acceptability of prejudice and discrimination among officers, normalizing a culture of dehumanization that legitimizes structural and direct violence. We analyze illustrative cases of racist blue humor in the light of critical race theory, humor studies, and other work in behavioral science to elaborate this violence and its potential for harm across multiple contexts. Racist blue humor engenders legal estrangement, diminishes protection and representation in law, and heightens exposure to police and other state violence. We conclude with considerations for research and policy, including order-maintenance policing of racist blue humor.

Racial/ethnic and gender diversity played an important role in the development of stand-up comedy in the US from the civil rights era to the present. Many of the most visible and celebrated comedians during this period (e.g. Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Margaret Cho) were critical in shaping and popularizing this culture industry we are most familiar with today. This paper examines the racial and gender demographic trends of winners and nominees in the Grammy Award for 'Best Comedy Album'. This award is the longest running prize for commercial comedy in the US, from 1959 to 2015. Here, I measure the cultural impact of the civil rights movement on this comedy award by analyzing race and gender trends of exclusion and inclusion throughout the award's history. I find the civil rights movement had a significant impact on racial inclusion (but not gender) until the mid-1980s. Moreover, while the current data suggests there is greater gender diversity in recent years, it also illustrates a trend toward racial exclusion. I contend that cultural prizes, while ostensibly awarding merit and excellence, are key public sites that reproduce racial inequality in the current 'color-blind' and 'post-racial' era.

While recent scholarship has examined the capacity of race‐based humor to “upend” racial inequalities, or has focused on comedic “heroes” who use humor “subversively” to challenge racism, less attention has been paid to the evolution of racist humor and its continued role in supporting dominant racial ideologies. This article reviews key works on the historical and current functions of racist humor in the United States, in order to situate racist humor as a social practice that has contributed to the development, maintenance, and contestation of an ideology of white supremacy. First, I review the historical role of racist humor in supporting pro‐slavery ideology, in order to see that racist humor played a critical role in racial formation and domination. I focus on literature that examines the way racial ridicule operated in the pre‐civil rights era (e.g., blackface) and the way such race‐based comedy was used as a cultural form of racialization that supported the development of an ideology of white supremacy throughout this period. Then, I point to how the widespread use of racist humor of the pre‐civil rights era was challenged by the civil rights movement, and how this changed the ways in which racist humor was perceived/operated, in public and private, in the post‐civil rights era. Finally, I conclude by suggesting some areas where an examination of racist humor is in need of critical attention and analysis in the current era of “color‐blindness.”

Humor controversies can simultaneously reveal and obscure relations of power, as well as the rhetorical/political nature of jokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one such controversy in July 2012 when he directed a rape joke toward a female audience member during a live performance in Hollywood, CA. This paper consists of a two-part analysis of this humor controversy. First, we examine a televised debate following this incident, between a comedian and feminist, to map the dominant framing and counter-framing of rape jokes. We contend these positions are representative of two frames that repeatedly surface in response to controversial sexist humor: a dominant patriarchal frame and an oppositional feminist counter-frame. Second, we analyze the saliency of these two frames among college students to observe the way individual interpretations resonate with, challenge, and complicate those frames. In light of our findings, we argue the dominant framing/interpretation of rape jokes reinforce patriarchal and free-market ideologies, and deny real-world implications of misogynistic humor, particularly when comedians/audiences defend such jokes as harmless fun.

This study examines US comedian Bill Dana, of Hungarian-Jewish descent, and his Latino minstrel character, “José Jiménez,” during the civil rights period. By situating Dana and Jiménez within the social and political context of Latinos in the US during the 1960s, I argue Dana’s comedy continued the tradition of racial ridicule at a time when blackface minstrelsy was increasingly unpopular: a result of contestation by African American civil rights groups. Analyzing primary sources (oral histories, news articles, and audio/visual media), I examine the initial popularity of José Jiménez in the early 1960s, the mechanisms used to ridicule Latinos, the role of media in constructing narratives of non-racism and acceptance by Latinos, and the resulting contestation of the character by Chicano/Latino media activists and civil rights organizations. I conclude that public racial ridicule of Latinos has not been constrained as some have suggested, but that it has changed since the civil rights era.

This article contends performance comedy serves as a mechanism for expressing ethnic and racial stereotypes in public and presents a challenge to studies of contemporary racial discourse which suggest overt racetalk in public is on the decline. In this ethnographic study on the training of stand-up comedians, I probe how comedy students learn to use rhetorical performance strategies to couch ethnic and racial stereotypes in more palatable ways, in order to be ‘funny’ rather than ‘offensive’ in public. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study illustrates the role elites play in managing racial discourse. It is found that white versus non-white comedy students are taught to engage in racial discourse in different ways. Whites are taught distance and denial strategies which allow them to engage in overt racial commentary and deny racism or racist intent, while non-whites are often encouraged to engage in racial stereotypes uncritically. This study shows how strategic use of humor allows the ‘constraints’ on current racial discourse, on whites in particular, to be broken, suggesting a new phase of color-blind racism may be underway.