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Original Research: Black American Humor through Time Sarah Lugo Ted Gournelos CMC 400 March 26th, 2011 Lugo 1 ABSTRACT: Through researching past stand up comedians from the mid 1900s to contemporary stand up comedians, my original research of how Black humor has been represented throughout the years will show how racial humor has changed and developed in time. For my original research, I have done an in depth content analysis of several comedians’ stand-up shows. The comedians I evaluate are Richard Pryor to represent the 60s and 70s, followed by Eddie Murphy (80s and 90s), and Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock to represent contemporary Black stand up comedy. By coding the similarities and differences in the framework of Black stand up humor, this content analysis will be helpful in evaluating the discourse of racial humor today and how it has established itself. BACKGROUND INFORMATION It is important to know the historical context of Black American relations were in different phases of equality and inequality at the height of Pryor, Murphy, Chapelle and Rocks’ careers. For Pryor, his popularity came after the post-war economic boom, which resulted in many conflicts over discrimination in housing, jobs and education (Race 1). His comedy also came at a time when the civil rights movement was in full effect, including Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963. Then in the 70’s, affirmative action started to develop, starting with the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1972, which meant that a person could not be discriminated against for their race when applying for employment. The concept of affirmative action was soon challenged in the Bakke versus University of California Supreme Court ruling. Lugo 2 Affirmative action continued to be challenged by Americans including the 1986 case of Wygant versus Jackson Board of Education when the supreme court believed that the school boards’ policy of “protecting minority teachers by laying off non-minority teachers regardless of seniority was unconstitutional” (Race 1). This was also when Eddie Murphy was doing stand up in the 80’s. There were many issues with immigration and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 followed by an anti-immigrant movement during this time. In the mid 1990’s, when Chris Rock began stand up comedy after leaving Saturday Night Live, racial profiling became more publicized. A familiar example would be the 1992 race riots after police officers were declared innocent after film footage showed the officers beating up a Black man, Rodney King. Cases of racial profiling and brutality were becoming more and more common targeting minority races. At the start of the 21st century, racial profiling in the United States transitioned from mostly Black and Hispanic targets to Middle Eastern Americans targets followed by the September 11th attacks. Contemporary comedian Dave Chapelle became popular in the 21st century with his sketch comedy shows as well as his stand-up shows. On top of issues with Middle Eastern American discrimination in post 9-11, affirmative action was challenged again in the Grutter versus Bollinger case of 2003 and the Parents versus Seattle and Meredith versus Jefferson cases of 2006, whereby concerns were addressed about schools accepting students because of their race in an attempt to create diversity was deemed unconstitutional. Lugo 3 CONTENT ANALYSIS For this content analysis I chose to look at several stand-up shows from each comedian. Regarding Richard Pryor, I analyzed his stand-up, That Nigger’s Crazy, which uses humor to embrace and empower Blackness. In studying Eddie Murphy, I observed his stand up shows Delirious and Raw whereby Murphy targets many immigrants in his jokes as well as making fun of Blacks. I also looked at Chris Rocks Bring the Pain, Big Ass Jokes, and Bigger & Blacker. In order to study the Black American humor in Dave Chapelle’s stand-up shows, I observed For What It’s Worth. After observing these scenes, I established that many of these comedians’ jokes have overlapping themes in which they use Black humor. Those themes included the use of self-deprecation humor, humor about racial inequality, White dominance, and Blackness. Relating the comedians’ shows to the era in which they were preformed show just how much Black humor has transformed with historic events. Richard Pryors’ use of Black humor in That Nigger’s Crazy included humor where he made fun of the antics that some “niggers” do. From a micro point of view, it is evident that he is using the term “nigger” lightly to refer to anyone while gearing his comedy toward Blacks. At one point in That Nigger’s Crazy, Pryor makes humor in comparing Whites to Blacks and saying that Whites are uptight, quiet when they eat and when they have sex, while “niggers” have rhythm and make noise. He goes further into the Black versus White comparison by stating that a Black man would have handled the scenes in The Exorcist movie differently–nonchalantly and without fear. Pryor is not intending to make humor of his own race in a destructive sense, but rather, making Blackness distinct from Whiteness. In turn, it is clear he is speaking to a Black audience. Lugo 4 At a macro perspective, we know that this is expected in that discrimination and fighting for civil rights were at its height, while this Black humor was being presented. Through this critical analysis of this piece, we can also understand that Pryor is trying to make Blackness as not the “other”. Likewise, Eddie Murphy’s stand ups construct a Black humor that also attempts to make Blackness distinct. Alternatively though, he does so by comparing Blacks from immigrants. In Raw, he jokes that Japanese wives are timid and obedient and that he needs to go to Africa and get a “bush bitch” that would be “naked on a zebra”, as in a native African who would not know about the culture of African American wives being greedy and wanting prenuptials. Later in the stand up, Murphy begins to criticize ItalianAmericans and tells a humorous story about how we was with a short Italian American who tried to boss him around and say “this nigger’s gonna buy my candy”. Murphy’s Black humor varies from Pryor in that he is speaking to neither a Black nor White audience and that he is making fun of Blackness in comparison to immigrants. In doing this, Murphy is reflecting the era of Black humor when Black and White segregation was transitioning toward anti-immigrants humor. From a macro level, we can see that Black humor began to evolve from a White versus Black approach to self-justification. Even at one point in Murphy’s stand up Delirious he is making fun of the idea that if there were modern day slavery then a White man asking a Black to “pick this cotton” would cue the response “suck my dick”. We can learn from this era that the Black humor seemed to become more defensive of the Black race rather than Pryor’s example of distinguishing Blackness through humor. A few years later, it feels as though Chris Rock picked up right where Eddie Lugo 5 Murphy left off in regards to immigration, expressed in his show Bigger & Blacker he made the joke that Black people can’t categorize Whites, they hate all White people, even the White immigrants. Even more progressively, Chris Rocks’ show Bring the Pain, he rants about how Black people hate niggers and how there is a difference between Black people and niggers, in that niggers “ruin everything for Blacks”. For example, Rock goes on to say that Black people do not care about welfare, whereas “niggers” rely on it. He makes “niggers” the target of his jokes in an attempt to separate Blackness into a superior and an “other”. At the time when Rock was making this humor in 1996, racial profiling began to further develop and was a major tribulation for the Black community. Chris Rock in Bigger & Blacker makes humor out of affirmative action in his joke about how “White men think they are losing shit…but no one would ever want to trade places with me and I’m rich”. Chris Rock in Big Ass Jokes makes a joke that a Black man is not successful without a White girl and every Black guy needs a White girl to make them feel accomplished. Rocks’ performance indicates that Black humor began to recognize how civil rights and racial equality are expressed in comedy. In a more contemporary sense, Dave Chappelle’s Black humor offers a different perspective in that he presumes that we are so far beyond racism that he makes humor out of Black stereotypes and racial hierarchy. In his stand up For What It’s Worth he begins by rhetorically asking the audience how anyone could hate watermelon and chicken and that it would never be a reason to hate someone. He then makes fun of White people by saying they have done a good job at keeping their food a secret. There is another instance where he uses racial humor; he talks about how Native Americans are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy because everyone thinks they are all dead. By analyzing the stand-up Lugo 6 shows, Chappelle’s humor is clearly the most contemporary in that he, like many other modern Black comedians, has a clear understanding of race in America and what race means for Black America. CONCLUSION While the underlining ideas around each comedian’s Black humor varies, they shared several similarities including the reinforcement of racial hierarchy, selfdeprecation humor, humor about racial inequality, humor in White dominance, humor in Blackness, and humor in Otherness. This critical content analysis demonstrates the trends and differences in which Black American humor has transitioned and developed to meet present-day comedy. In analyzing how racial humor is constructed it is important to know how black comedy differs over the years is regard to contemporary racial humor. “On my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this piece of work” – Sarah Lugo Work Cited "Race - Are We So Different? A Project of the American Anthropological Association."RACE. Ed. Mary Margaret Overbey Ph.D. American Anthropological Association, 2011. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://www.understandingrace.org/>.