Resistance TV

Abstract

African American sketch comedy uses satirical humor to decenter common white tropes of Blackness that are reinforced in media depictions through an intellectual and emotional approach that both frees satirists from traditional form and structure and that asks viewers—especially white ones—to question the root cause of their laughter and in turn their embrace of racist systems. Focusing on the harmfulness of racism and its intersection with sexism, this article argues that sketch comedy uses satirical humor to flip the script on commonly held stereotypes of Blackness, resist American racism, and in the end assert a claim for Black humanity in self-defined terms, offering humorous resistance as a modality that may get us closer to finding an “off switch” to racism.