Antoine, Katja. “’Pushing the Edge’ of Race and Gender Hegemonies through Stand-up Comedy: Performing Slavery as Anti-Racist Critique.” Etnofoor, vol. 28, no. 1, 2016, pp. 35–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43823941.

• Talks about how stand-up comedians address race and other topics in an attempt to push social boundaries. This account details two jokes, one by Leslie Jones and the other by Chris Rock, that use slavery to discuss modern racism and analyzes differences in their receptions. This source will be helpful for talking about how humor can enable conversations about racial issues.

Burma, John H. “Humor as a Technique in Race Conflict.” American Sociological Review, vol. 11, no. 6, 1946, pp. 710–715. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2087066.

• Older source exploring how race comes up in different types of jokes in the 1940s. I may use this to establish some timeline and for the specific examples of jokes that it brings up to show how the discourse around race and humor has changed.

Davidson, Chandler. “Ethnic Jokes: An Introduction to Race and Nationality.” Teaching Sociology, vol. 15, no. 3, 1987, pp. 296–302. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1318345.

• A professor’s account of fieldwork and conversations conducted by his sociology students surrounding ethnically based jokes. Includes discussion of the perceived and actual intentions of these jokes, biases in self-reporting, and what makes a joke racist. I think the points he brings up about what makes a joke racist could be quite useful for the purposes of exploring the effects of racial humor today, both on the stage (stand-up, television) and in private conversation.

Henderson, Felicia D. “The Culture Behind Closed Doors: Issues of Gender and Race in the Writers’ Room.” Cinema Journal, vol. 50, no. 2, 2011, pp. 145–152. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41240701.

• Talks about how a homogenous (white) culture is reinforced in writing rooms for television shows and movies, effectively silencing and marginalizing people of color and women. I hope to use this to establish the importance of creating space for these voices in entertainment.

Nielson, Erik. “White Surveillance of the Black Arts.” African American Review, vol. 47, no. 1, 2014, pp. 161–177., www.jstor.org/stable/24589802.

• Primarily focuses on the Black Arts Movement of the 60s and 70s and how it was shaped by white influence (funders, FBI, audience/critics). I want to use this source to draw connections between how the expression of Black artists/comedians/public figures is still affected, albeit differently, by these forces. I also want to connect it to the idea from “Pushing the Edge…” that comedians (especially comedians of color) are challenged to play off the specific boundaries of their audiences/the balance that they must strike when talking about race.

“Race and the No-Spin Zone: The Thin Line between Trolling and Corporate Punditry.” This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, by Whitney Phillips, MIT Press, 2015, pp. 95–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17kk8k7.11.

• Focuses in on racist memes during Obama’s run for presidency in 2008 and how they were proliferated by both internet trolls and mainstream media. Explores the similarities between the news coverage and internet conversations. This book chapter is useful because it points out some important definitions (overt and inferential racism) and explains how people often try to rationalize that they and/or their words/actions are not and could not be racist.

Roberts, Rosemarie A., et al. “Flipping the Script: Analyzing Youth Talk about Race and Racism.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, 2008, pp. 334–354. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25166672.

• Discusses the ways that Black youth (and people of color historically) talk about race and challenge white supremacy through humor and storytelling. Follows a story-telling curriculum implemented in a particular school in NYC to collect data about these children and their discussions/perceptions about race and discrimination. I want to explore this source’s discussion of “African American humor as resistance” and to see how this is developing in a more modern context.

Additional Sources/Leads

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz

• I’m hoping that I might be able to draw a connection from this text between discussions of race in comedy (by white comedians) and the “private prejudice” used to “insure that whites wind up on top of the social hierarchy.”

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

• I need to read more of this but I wonder if the conversations around the erasure of individual identity in favor of generalized groups would be helpful in explaining the harmful impact of some jokes. There is also mention of how jokes are one way that white people reinforce white supremacy.

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