To Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy (OXFORD STUDIES IN LANGUAGE RACE SERIES)

To Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy examines Black standup comedy over the past decade as a stage for understanding why notions of racial authenticity--in essence, appeals to "realness" and "real Blackness"--emerge as a cultural imperative in African American culture. Ethnographic observations and interviews with Black comedians ground this telling, providing a narrative arc of key historical moments in the new millennium. Readers will understand how and why African American comics invoke "realness" to qualify nationalist 9/11 discourses and grapple with the racial entailments of the war, overcome a sense of racial despair in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, critique Michael Richards' ["Kramer's"] notorious rant at The Laugh Factory and subsequent attempts to censor their use of the n-word, and reconcile the politics of a "real" in their own and other Black folks' everyday lives. Additionally, readers will hear through audience murmurs, hisses, and boos how beliefs about racial authenticity are intensely class-wrought and fraught. Moreover, they will appreciate how context remains ever critical to when and why African American comics and audiences lobby for and/or lampoon jokes that differentiate the "real" from the "fake" or "Black folks" from so-called "niggahs." Context and racial vulnerability are critical to understanding how and why allusions to "racial authenticity" persist in the African American comedic and cultural imagination. "This book examines African American standup comedy over the past decade as a stage for understanding why notions of racial authenticity - in essence, appeals to "realness" and "real Blackness" - emerge as a cultural imperative in African American culture. Ethnographic observations and interviews with Black comedians ground this telling, providing a narrative arc of key historical moments in the new millennium. Readers will understand how and why African American comics invoke "realness" to: qualify nationalist 9/11 discourses and grapple with the racial entailments of the war, overcome a sense of racial despair in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, critique Michael Richards' ["Kramer's"] notorious rant at The Laugh Factory and subsequent attempts to censor their use of the n-word, and reconcile the politics of a "real" Black in Black folks' everyday lives via Kevin Hart's meteoric rise to global stardom. Additionally, readers will hear through audience murmurs, hisses, and boos how beliefs about racial authenticity are intensely class-wrought and fraught. Moreover, they will appreciate how context remains ever critical to when and why African American comics and audiences lobby for and/or lampoon jokes that differentiate the "real" from the "fake" or "Black folks" from "niggahs." To Be Real's take-home point is this: context and racial vulnerability are critical to understanding how and why allusions to "racial authenticity" persist in the African American comedic and cultural imagination. During watershed moments of crisis (e.g., 9/11, Hurricane Katrina) or incessant hope (e.g., 2008 Presidential election), African American stances around racial authenticity bespeak a need to define who and whose they are, if only to contend with the enduring significance of race. By consciously valuing a "real"- as opposed to strict notions of "the real" (which too often essentialize, objectify, and exclude) - this book reveals why authenticity matters to African Americans and, arguably all of us, when the proverbial -ish hits the fan and then, too, when things are calm and still" Cover Half Title Series To Be Real Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: The Why of Racial Authenticity 1. “The Arab Is the New Nigger”: African American Comics Confront the Irony and Tragedy of September 11 2. “Why We Gotta Be Refugees?” Empathizing Authenticity in African American Hurricane Katrina Humor 3. On Michael Richards, Racial Authenticity, and the “N-​word” 4. “It’s About to Get Real”: Kevin Hart as a Modern-​Day Trickster 5. Humor, Me: A (Tentative) Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index