Ethnic Humor: Subversion and Survival

PEOPLE HAVE UNDOUBTEDLY ALWAYS LAUGHED AT OTHERS WHO SEEMED DIStinct, to reassure themselves and to blunt the threats implicit in differences. Ethnic slurs in joking form have reflected the tensions of social difference in America, and they continue to serve important, though sometimes distasteful, functions in American life. Active and resurgent, intentionally cruel and demeaning, ethnic humor has a lengthy past characterized by resiliency and forward-looking adaptability. Ethnic humor against supposedly inferior social groups initially conveyed the thrusts of the well-entrenched members of society, the white, mostly Protestant haves, against the newly arriving immigrants or their imperfectly assimilated offspring, or against black slaves, freedmen, their children, and children's children. It also designated other unfortunates typically of red, yellow, and brown complexions. Ethnic humor in the United States originated as a function of social class feelings of superiority and white racial antagonisms, and expresses the continuing resistance of advantaged groups to unrestrained immigration and to emancipation's black subcitizens barred from opportunities for participation and productivity. In time, ironically, the resulting derisive stereotypes were adopted by their targets in mocking self-description, and then, triumphantly, adapted by the victims of stereotyping themselves as a means of revenge against their more powerful detractors. Such humor is one of the most effective and vicious weapons in the repertory of the human mind. For this reason, Thomas Hobbes related laughter to power and traced the origins and purposes of laughter to social rivalry. The passion of laughter, he sensed, was nothing more than the proclaiming of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others or with our own