It’s Funny because it’s True: The Mimetic Relation of Black Performance Comedy and American Racism in the ‘Colorblind Era’

Abstract

If art imitates life, then how seriously should the work of comedians be taken? Since the advent of chattel slavery in the US blacks have used comedy as discourse to undermine racial inequality, often by playing off white naïveté about stereotypes manufactured about blacks. As whites’ overt racist discourse survived the emancipation, settled into black codes, and later Jim Crow era racism, black performance comics, notably Dick Gregory, Billy Cosby, and most famously Richard Pryor continued using comedy to undermine whites’ overt racism. Today, in the so-called ‘colorblind era,’ there is a belief that the US has transcended the race-based inequality that has been a defining feature of American society since the architects of the nation balked on the “self-evident” truths “that all men are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While it is true that scholars have noted the decline of overt racist speech on the part of whites, the same scholars also note inherent racism in colorblindness that continues to bolster white supremacy at the expense of blacks and other minority groups; one such piece of evidence is the performance comedy of black performers. Using Critical Discourse Analysis this study examines the performance comedy of mainstream post-soul era comedians: Dave Chappelle, Wyatt Cenac, Hannibal Buress, and others to understand how black comedy is shaped by white supremacy in the colorblind era.