American Anthropological Association

In his Transforming Anthropology article “What Are You Laughing At?: Assessing the “Racial” in U.S. Public Discourse”, John Hartigan Jr. explores the social conventions by which Americans “keep laughing about race, even as they draw emphatic lines about not being amused by racist humor.”

According to Hartigan, when public figures Don Imus and Michael Richards claimed their “racial remarks” were just part of their comedy routines, no one believed them. But a series of popular television ads whose comedy relied at least in part on racial signifiers (Geico cavemen and the Career Builder office monkeys), drew little critical attention.

Using this contrast, Hartigan concludes that any thorough analysis of race in popular culture must look beyond the ideological, political and historical aspects of racism, to consider also the fundamental categorical tension of individual and group in American culture.

Check out Anthrosource for this and other articles from Transforming Anthropology’s special issue on Whiteness.