Raul Perez
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raulperez.bsky.social
Raul Perez
@raulperez.bsky.social
4.3K followers 240 following 89 posts
sociologist and author of The Souls of White Jokes (Stanford University Press) https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=30308
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Reposted by Raul Perez
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[Originally posted by: @raulperez.bsky.social]
THE SOULS OF WHITE JOKES HOW RACIST HUMOR FUELS WHITE SUPREMACY RAÚL PÉREZ CHAPTER 2 AMUSED RACIAL CONTEMPT, OR A THEORY OF WHITE RACIST HUMOR "It is interesting to notice the great pleasure white people in all classes take in ... stereotyped jokes and in indulging in discussions about the Negro and what he does, says and thinks. It is apparently felt as a release.... Dokes give release to troubled people.... The main "function' of the joke is thus to create a collective surreptitious approbation for something which cannot be approved explicitly because of moral inhibitions. To the whites the Negro jokes further serve the function of proving' the inferiority of the Negro." Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma WHAT DOES RACIST HUMOR do in society! Over the last century, many have commented and speculated on the social impact, or lack thereof, of racist joking and humor in society-that it is wrong, inappropriate, of-fensive, innocent, harmless, and so on. Yet, even as esteemed scholars and writers have pointed to the role of racist humor in reinforcing notions of racial inferiority and superiority, few have aimed to develop a fuller theoretical analysis of racist humor or what it does in society. When scholars and writers do consider such humor, it is most often discussed anecdotally or anachronistically. Yet, as the history of blackface minstrelsy un-derscores, racist humor, particularly in the entertainment industry, played a powerful role in reproducing white racist pleasure, white supremacist ideologies, and an affirmation of white identity during the late I9th and EPILOGUE RACIST HUMOR AND THE CULT (URE) OF WHITENESS "The time may come when [non-whites] and whites can tell jokes about each other in ways which do not reproduce racial categories of the world in which they are told. The time... is certainly not yet arrived." Stuart Hall, Racist Ideologies and the Media" OVER THE LAST TWO CENTURIES in the United States, the practice and politics of amused racial contempt has played a significant role in shaping a racist understanding of society. It has played this role across different eras of racial history—from slavery to post-emancipation, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow and from the so-called colorblind and post-racial era that emerged after the civil rights movement of the mid-oth century and into the present day. Amused racial contempt is a significant, and often over-Looked, social and affective mechanism that works to link individual, cul-tural, and structural dimensions of racism and white supremacy. It is used as an affective pedagogical tool that aligns and reproduces the ideologies and cultural emotions of whiteness, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness across societal contexts, social settings, classes, and generations. It is used not only by white people but also by non-whites who aspire towards the social power of whiteness and its class privileges.! It is a key feature in the everyday formation of whiteness and racism via a "white racial framing of society. In the current era, racist humor has also served to unite a broad swath of conservatism and white nationalism, in an ostensibly colorblind TABLE OF CONTENTS Note on Terminology ix I The Racial Power of Humor 2 Amused Racial Contempt, or a Theory of White Racist Humor 3 Hiding in Plain Sight: The Violent Racist Humor of the Far Right 4 Blue Humor: The Racist Insults and Injuries of the Police 5 President Chimp: The Politics of Amused Racial Contempt EPILOGUE Racist Humor and the Culture) of Whiteness Acknowledgments Notes 179 Index 207 173 22 50 123 159
October 22, 2025 at 10:42 PM
raulperez.bsky.social
Thank you 🙏
October 22, 2025 at 11:28 PM
raulperez.bsky.social
Sorry I do not, or not yet. Will ask the publisher
October 22, 2025 at 4:33 PM
raulperez.bsky.social
Just sent you dm
October 18, 2025 at 8:07 PM