Bryce Dale
U0846264
A Survey of Jewish and African American Humor Ethnic humor is a widely used social mechanism that can help ethnic groups, whether brought together by religion or skin color, come to terms with their identity as well as negotiate shifting relationships with other groups of varying backgrounds. Multifaceted in nature, ethnic humor can be used both internally to ridicule members of one’s own society as well as externally, ridiculing oppressing parties. Either way, ethnic humor allows for oppressed societies to advance in the face of adversity. The two most prevalent cases of this are in the Black and Jewish communities. I will go on to explain the similarities, such as ancient origins of Jewish and African American humor, and the differences, like the opposite routes the respective styles took as they modernized in American culture. Perhaps the reason for two largely oppressed groups to incorporate humor into their culture is best explained by T. Cohen when he says, “An absurdity can be and example, a symbol, or even, say, an emblem of incomprehensibility. To laugh at absurdity can be an acceptance of its incomprehensibility.” African American humor has even converged with Jewish humor on many occasions, such as the musical The Jazz Singer, where Jews portray black characters, and even more recently with Jewish comedian Larry David portraying ethnic differences between Blacks and Jews on Curb Your Enthusiasm. We will now examine how two ethnicities with histories of marginalization and disenfranchisement used humor to accept their history and assimilate with the rest of society.
The nature of Jewish humor is largely disputed among academics like Freud and Dan Ben-Amos. It is no secret that Jews have had a sense of humor since Biblical times. A great example of this is in 2 Chronicles where a king writes, “Jehoram was thirty-two years old when