African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century

African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century

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Over the last few years, Black Millennials have taken African American satire in a fresh new direction. Against early comedies that played to respectability politics, and under the influence of Black Lives Matter, contemporary Black satirists are, on the whole, producing work that is more directly political than we have seen in decades.

I set the current cohort of Black satirists against the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who dominated the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. They were the witty progeny of the Civil Rights Movement. They were not constrained, as their predecessors were, by the material reality of legal segregation and the Jim Crow South, but were instead free to chart a new path. As Trey Ellis argued in "New Black Aesthetic" in 1989, "new black artists [aren't] shocked by the persistence of racism as were those of the Harlem Renaissance, nor are we preoccupied with it as were those of the Black Arts Movement. For us, racism is a hard and little-changing constant that neither surprises or enrages."1 Ellis paints a picture of his generation figuring out the stakes of decentering race and racism from performances and expressions of blackness at a time when affirmative action, multiculturalism, and gang violence were leading concerns.  

Ellis's generation's work — with the exception of In Living Color (1990-1994) and really anything that the Wayans did — was largely marked by an investment in depictions of affluent blackness.2 Consider The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Percival Everett's Erasure. This was due to what I call the Cosby Effect: the lasting influence of the extraordinary success of The Cosby Show. The Cosby Effect led to a focus on upper- and middle-class Black America and to centering blackness without naming race and racism: the cultural wing of respectability politics. As Bambi Haggins writes, Bill Cosby, "as creative producer of the series, as well as its star, remained adamant that sociopolitical issues (namely, race relations) need not be a part of the narrative."3 Haggins quotes Cosby as saying, "I won't deal with the foolishness of racial overtones on the show. I base an awful lot of what I've done simply on what people will enjoy."4 By "what people will enjoy," I take him to mean what white audiences would enjoy. The Cosby Effect set up Black comedy to pander to white liberals often at the expense of eliding the experience of poor Black folxs.

Black satire from that period — the 90s and 00s — diverged from The Cosby Show in its displays of ambivalence about politics. It shed light on the lingering effects of stereotypes, racism, and discrimination, but often laughed at the inevitability of anti-blackness, making it less reliant on universal appeal and respectability politics, reflecting shifting notions of political correctness from the Baby Boomers to Gen X. Consider Dave Chappelle's Niggar Family sketch on Chappelle's Show. The sketch used a 1950s black-and-white family sitcom aesthetic like that of Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963). It centered around a white, middle class family with the last name "Niggar." Everyone in it is white except "Clifton the Colored Milkman" (played by Chappelle) and his wife. The novelty of the sketch was the prevalence of the n-word and its attachment of Black stereotypes to this white family because of their name. The sketch ends with Chappelle's character trying to get a table at a local restaurant when the host calls for "Niggar, party of two." Is he being called the n-word? No: he realizes that the teenage son of the Niggar family is there with a date. The Black couple laughs at the momentary confusion and Chappelle's character says, "Oo-wee, this racism is killing me inside." Chappelle's character recognizes the levity of the situation, but the sketch is haunting for how it fatalistically portrays the persistence of racism.

For today's Millennial Black satirists, fatalism is not enough. They insist on moving beyond ambivalence, toward action. They name injustice toward its eradication. We can see the shift if we look at the trajectory of Chappelle's career. With Chappelle's Show, he enjoyed "a sort of dual credibility — his comic persona [was] inflected by both the afrocentrism of the black hip-hop intelligentsia and the skater/slacker/stoner ethos of suburban life."5 Almost twenty years later, Chappelle's stirring performance in 8:46 in the wake of George Floyd's murder in the summer of 2020 served as a necessary passing of the baton for a comedic genius who realized that he might not have the tools to capture the voice of this new younger generation. The special was intentionally not funny, repeating, with the difference of sincerity, his old line: "this racism is killing me inside." At the same time, not fully ready for his moment to pass, Chappelle angrily attacked the notion that celebrities should have to speak on issues pertaining to racial justice.

Black Lives Matter has shaped Millennial Black satire, urging a rejection of the Cosby Effect. These Black satirists create work that is not so easily coopted by white liberals. For instance, Ziwe Fumudoh's self-titled show, Ziwe (2021), on Starz uses the call-out culture of our moment to revel in white discomfort. Ziwe, a student of Black Studies, brilliantly uses social justice and political commentary to try to unearth any underlying racist feelings or assumptions by her guests. This is all usually done in good fun — the line of questioning often borders on the absurd — but it creates and maintains a space of uneasiness for her guests. Ziwe then doubles down on these uncomfortable feelings through sketches and musical selections: like a focus group for real women named Karen, or a game show to name the "wokest ally." 

The post-Obama scene has especially seen the increase in Black women's satire. Consider how Issa Rae addresses politics in Insecure. In the show, people don't want to work with her character's non-profit organization, "We Got Y'all," because it lacks BIPOC representation and uses deficit thinking in its approach to helping Black and Brown students. Rae's character addresses the underlying issue of whiteness, ultimately realizing that she can no longer work there because it does not change fast enough. HBO in particular has created space for Black women satirists to push forward conversation, representation, and forms of critique. In addition to Insecure,HBO has added Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson's visual compendium to their podcast 2 Dope Queens and Robin Thede's Black Lady Sketch Show. We see a broader interest in Black women and girls' stories and storytelling in Euphoria and Watchmen, among others.

Like HBO, Netflix has built out a platform for Black storytellers and in so doing has changed the landscape for Black satire, often symbiotically with social media. King Bach and Sarah Cooper have been able to use their fame and celebrity from social media platforms to leverage roles and specials on Netflix.

Justin Simien's Dear White People is a great example of Millennial Black comedy on Netflix.

Although Dear White People centers on what life is like at a wealthy private university for Black people, Simien makes sure to leave space to think about other aspects of Black life like love, Black women's bodies, colorism, wealth, and queerness. The show creates space for various people across a broad range of identities and gives them the ability to speak, think, and most importantly, to critique. The plurality of voices and social commentary for Simien's show reflects the social, political, and cultural investments of Millennials and helps to decenter Black men in popular Black satirical spaces, and to depict a much greater range of experiences for Black men than was available for earlier generations. Under the sway of the Cosby Effect, satirists sometimes suggested that the good intentions of multiculturalism were enough, or they threw up their hands at the inevitability of racism. Black Millennials satirists refuse to limit themselves to those political horizons, all too often defined by the desires of white liberals. We're witnessing the forceful vision of a powerful new generation.

Brandon J. Manning (@ProfBManning) is an Assistant Professor of Black Literature and Culture in the Department of English and a core faculty member in the Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Department and Women and Gender Studies Department at Texas Christian University. His forthcoming book from Rutgers University press, Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire is an examination of black masculine performance and vulnerability through the lens of contemporary satire. The project reflects his scholarly and pedagogical interests in contemporary African American literary and cultural studies, black popular culture, black feminist theory, sexuality studies, and humor studies. He has published a number of essays in journals and edited collections and coedited a special issue of The Black Scholar on Black Masculinities and the Matter of Vulnerability.

References

  1. Trey Ellis, "The New Black Aesthetic," Callaloo, no. 38 (1989): 239-240.[⤒]
  2. The Wayans family especially Keenan, Damon, Kim, Shawn, and Marlon are responsible for numerous comedies and satiric production in the late 90s and early 2000s. Keenan began his ascent into Black humorous and satirical spaces with Hollywood Shuffle (1987) which he cowrote with Robert Townsend. Keenan would go on to create and host the sketch comedy show, In Living Color (1990-1994) where his siblings were regular on the show. Central to the landscape of the Wayans' humor and satiric production is Scary Movie (2000) and Scary Movie 2 (2001). In these films, under the directorship of Keenan Wayans these films spoofed prominent horror films in the late 20th century. In the late 20th century, the Wayans family centered their poor and urban upbringing in the characters and stories that they told as a point of distinction from other Black comedic and satirical spaces. Their perspectives like those that were in the spoof Don't Be A Menace To Society While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996) that Keenan produced and Shawn and Marlon cowrote parodied Black urban representation of the early 90s and 2000s. [⤒]
  3. Bambi Haggins, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007) 30.[⤒]
  4. Haggins, Laughing Mad, 31. [⤒]
  5. Haggins, Laughing Mad,179.[⤒]

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