Content area
Full Text
This article examines 9/11-related humor observed during a fifteen-month, pilot ethnographic study of African American/"urban" stand-up comedy. Findings illuminate Black stand-up comedy as decidedly in-group contexts that afford multiple opportunities for intracultural deliberations around race, notions of truth and authenticity, and the state of the nation. Black stand-up comedy likewise presents a fitting stage through which to gauge African American responses to September 11 and the subsequent war on terrorism, as well as the ways Black comedic performances both reflect and shape African Americans' cultural understandings of the world and their place(s) in it. An analysis of 9/11 jokes that worked and failed further reveals how race served to qualify expressions of post-9/11 nationalism and American identity for many African Americans.
KEYWORDS: African Americans, humor, September 11, double consciousness, patriotism
"Black people, we have been delivered. Finally, we got a new nigger. The Middle Easterner is the new nigger."
-Comedian Ian Edwards
"Finally."
-African American audience member
Undeniably, the events of September 11 stunned and momentarily silenced many American comics, including some of the nation's most popular humorists. As Jay Leno and David Letterman expressed their personal grief on-screen, Los Angeles-based African American comics and their largely Black and Brown audiences had somehow found the will to laugh. How did they find humor in the wake of such wide-scale tragedy and loss?
These questions consumed me in the weeks following the terrorist attacks, transforming a long-held casual interest in Black stand-up comedy into an impassioned preoccupation. In October 2001, I immersed myself in urban comedy shows and competitions in and beyond the Los Angeles area. I also spoke with comedians, club owners, promoters, and club-goers to gain deeper insights into 9/11-related humor and audience laughter (or silence) in response. In time, I amassed a wealth of jokes highlighting such topics as the war on terrorism, patriotism, racial profiling, and President Bush.
Significantly, many of these jokes belie popular claims that America has become more unified and its citizens more patriotic as a result of the national tragedy. While certainly sympathetic to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, including one of their own (comic David Williams, a.k.a. "Dogface"), many comics maintained an unabashedly critical stance toward American foreign policy, presidential rhetoric, and frenzied flag-waving. Their...