Why are you Laughing?

As a Netflix binger, I fully admit to religiously watching shows like Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Family Guy, and Amy Schumer stand up. With this being said, I was immediately intrigued by the topic covered during lecture of “progressive versus regressive comedy”, a subject that, now as a (semi) adult, forces me to stop and think, why am I laughing and is this okay? Though, I am a culprit for laughing during class when viewing the clip of Dave Chapelle’s stand up, I find there was something unsettling about my white self and my white classmates erupting with laughter. When reading Fight the Power: African American Humor as a discourse of Resistance I began to question my amusement. I was struck by Chappelle’s own uncertainty of his comedic stand-up, noting that he took time off from his career partially based on the fact “He felt he was reinforcing stereotypes instead of deconstructing them,” (Bailey, 254). This article discusses how stereotypes of minorities are amplified due to themes covered by popular comedians. Alluding to the idea that the intricate stories told by comedians, like Chapelle, might actually be doing more harm to certain demographics than good, seeing as humor has the potential to actually alter the way in which “people interpret the world” whether they consciously realize it or not (257). Bailey quotes Langston Hughes when referencing the nature in which people associate humor with reality “Humor is when the joke is on you but hits the other fellow first-before it boomerangs,” (257). I feel as if there are multiple ways in which to interpret this quote, however, my first though was: When Chapelle made the joke of the “typical” black person on “The Real World” it received an eruption of laughter, but, shouldn’t white people be ashamed that black people have received this common character on the majority of shows due to universalism that takes place because of the white race in the United States??