Regulating Funny: Race, Law, and the Sense of Humor

• In Event: 163 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. Race and Law on the 50th Anniversary of the US Civil Rights Act

Abstract

Recent socio-legal research has debated the legal, political, and moral basis for regulating racist (and otherwise harmful) speech. This study seeks to address how racist speech is presently regulated by private entities (soft law), in the public interest, and how this relates to the presence or absence of legal regulation (hard law). My analysis will focus on the regulation of racist jokes by selecting cases which illustrate the regulation of racial abuse in public. I will bring two distinct cases to this inquiry: 1) controversial race jokes performed in public by comedians, and 2) controversial race jokes told by other public figures in private which are then made public. I will examine and highlight incidents in which comedians breach normative racetalk and face public scrutiny in these two contexts alongside a comparison of the explicit and implicit laws and norms at work. I will also focus on the regulation of racist humor told by non-comedian public figures in the US and examine these incidents as examples which illustrate the persisting limits on racist speech in public. By comparing these cases, including their transnational social and legal backdrops, we stand to gain greater insight into both the phenomenon of racist speech in western liberal democracies, and the importance, possibilities, and limits of regulating racial discourse in these contexts.

Author

• Raúl Pérez, University of California-Irvine