Comic Development of Racial Identity, Agency, and Accountability

• In Event: Race, Whiteness and Culture

Abstract

(White) Citizens often fail to recognize ourselves and others as political agents capable of changing our racialized conditions. However, a critical–rhetorical comic education constitutes political identities around common problems and mirrors limited white racial consciousness so that the audience can see themselves as connected to the problem of racial injustice. Racial comedy presents problems of racial injustice to audiences such that audience members are hailed as responsible citizens and called to civic accountability.

Author

• Jonathan Rossing, Indiana University