Racism in Comedy

Inspired by this post which revolves around Amy Sedaris’s “quirky” brand of humor.

As much as I love her work on Strangers with Candy, I have trouble understanding the need for Amy Sedaris to go on with jokes that contain racial stereotypes as part of her “quirky” persona. I think what troubled me the most is that her character Jerri (as I saw and understood her actions) is meant to be someone who is socially degenerate. I took her racist attitude and shameless stereotyping to be part of her (comically) despicable behavior – not, as I found out by reading this interview which was linked to in the comments area of above post, a part of Sedaris’s own personality.

How did the character of Jerri develop, specifically some of the cruder aspects and being bisexual, and the off-color, sort of racist remarks? How did that come about?
It just kind of happened once I had the look down, I knew what Jerri Blank looked like. I knew I wanted her to look like she owned a snake, and I kind of wanted her hair to be nice, like a professional golfer’s, and I wanted her to have a nice style. But yeah, she means well, and she’s innocent, but she is a racist, and she can be very nasty. She’s like a kid. All of her emotions are very raw.

She has no delay, it seems?
No she didn’t, which is a lot like me. Trust me, Jerri Blank and I are a lot alike, not with the history of the booze and all that, but just like, “What did I say?” Plus, once I get that mouth thing down, automatically I start acting differently. Also having a wide bottom, you discover things you can do with that. I’m a lot freer and sexier with a fatty suit on.

Once you’ve got a character down, things just kind of happen. You don’t know how they happen; they just come out of the character.

Basically, it sounds like creating the character of Jerri enabled Sedaris to make racist remarks for entertainment value. I am not against comedians having material that points out and makes a mockery of racism in itself (which is how I interpreted Jerri), but it is so easy to cross over from social commentary to a blatantly racist joke with no value. There exists people who understand the difference, but there are many who don’t.

With mixed peoples, we are at an interesting position because there are times when people may approach us with racial jokes and stereotyping without realizing that they are joking about us. When abroad in Japan, I’ve encountered other students who made jokes and generalizations about Japanese women in front of me without knowing I was half. (And these are people who have come to another country to supposedly gain cultural insight and expand their horizons. Right.) But it makes me wonder: would they still have told the jokes and made the generalizations if they knew I was a part of who they were talking about? If I said something, would they just brush me off with “Oh, it was just a joke”?

Likewise, with comedians such as Sedaris, would they still tell the jokes if it wasn’t considered “cool” or “ironic”? Is it worth getting a laugh at the expense of a targeted race using jokes that stem from a history of (and even ongoing) oppression? Or are such jokes supposed to be considered “post-racial”?