Recent conversations dominating the comedy world in the past few years have a lot to do with a changing status quo. We’ve heard it in the arguments about whether the internet is really a democratizing force that rewards the best output (content is king!). We’ve seen it in the back-and-forth over the female comics alleging incidents of sexual harassment and assault.

Finally, and perhaps most visibly, we’ve witnessed it in the debate about whether there’s a place for political correctness in comedy—that profession that profits from poking fun at others, playing with taboo, and pushing the proverbial envelope. From Dennis Miller to Jim Norton to Daniel Lawrence Whitney (a.k.a. Larry the Cable Guy), spates of comics are bemoaning the infringement on their freedom of speech wrought by overly-sensitive listeners. Even Jerry Seinfeld, famous for his harmless observational patter, took to the Late Night with Seth Meyers to voice his objections to what he sees as: “A creepy PC thing out there that really bothers me.” As an example, he refers to a joke in which he dons a stereotypical gay male affect. It hasn’t been going over too well, he says, but explains that it’s only because audiences are too afraid to laugh for fear of seeming bigoted.

While some among the anti-PC ranks are comics of color, like Chris Rock and Russell Peters, and a few are women, like Lisa Lampanelli, queen of shock comedy, those most vocal about this are, by and large, straight white male comics. A male sense of humor has long stood in as humor genera. But with the advent of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media, fans have myriad avenues for challenging this presumption of a shared comic sensibility willing to take potshots at the disenfranchised, and for finding alternatives that better fit their tastes.

Of course, these conversations are not new or even symptomatic of social media. From the Culture Wars of decades past to more modern debates about multiculturalism and diversity, there have always been those lamenting shifts in our shared identity. Though the critics may cloak it in the language of having the right to say whatever they want, what they’re really trying to safeguard is an old idea of who “we” (as a group, a university, a nation, an industry) are. In the case of comedy, the debates about political incorrectness hit on core questions about who gets to join and stay in the club: What do we think is funny? What isn’t? Who can get away with certain jokes? Who can’t? You can see why the deliberation gets so heated.

The internet has also added an extra layer of public scrutiny to these complex questions. Smartphone videos and social media virality have allowed material once confined to intimate comedy clubs to easily make its way to critical audiences across the world wide web. We’ve already seen this phenomenon in full force: Criticism for Daily Show replacement Trevor Noah’s handful of tasteless anti-Semitic and sexist tweets. A social media storm over Daniel Tosh’s joke about a female audience member being gang-raped. Offense taken at Tracy Morgan’s anti-gay rant. Outrage over Michael Richard’s racist outburst at a heckler. The trend even prompted New Yorker writer Ian Crouch to ask “Is social media ruining comedy?” His answer, for the record, was a definitive “no.”

Social media has, however, undeniably changed the power dynamic between performer and audiences. Spectators, emboldened by these new platforms, are unafraid to unleash cavalcades of criticism aimed at comics who they perceive as expressing homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynistic worldviews.

What’s notable about these new, louder voices is that they aren’t stifling free speech (that bludgeon so often used by incorrectness defenders). They’re creating more. Comics such as Jim Norton may criticize the internet outrage gang for spending too much time railing about matters that are inconsequential, namely jokes told by comics. Upon closer examination, however, a lot of these “petty” conversations speak to issues of great significance in our society like how we portray and treat historically disenfranchised groups.

Does some of the outrage go too far? Yes. Will fear of backlash lead to some performers self-censoring their material? Perhaps. (Though you’ll note that most of these complainers aren’t exactly being silenced.) But it’s a false presumption that being more mindful when it comes to producing humor that punches down will somehow create comedy that’s less funny. If anything, it makes it smarter.

Here, too, change is afoot in the industry. The “the internet changes everything!” trope is a tired one, but it is impossible to ignore that this connectedness changes the way people produce, circulate, and consume humor. Comics are taking their talents to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and podcasts. Retweets, likes, and shares can lead to a big breakthrough or, at the very least, help fill seats at a show. Although a late-night TV spot or a network stand-up special certainly helps a career, they’re no longer the only determinants of who becomes successful. Creators and consumers now have more power than ever to shape what becomes popular comedic content.

Through this confluence of a culture of sharing and a culture that’s more open to hearing from diverse comics (and that’s more diverse itself), we’re seeing a flourishing of all sorts of humor that had a hard time finding opportunities to break through. There’s Hari Kondabolu, who recently dropped a critically-acclaimed digital album joking about waiting for 2042, the predicted year when whites will be the minority in America. There’s Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams, who cohost 2 Dope Queens, a widely successful podcast that features the rhetorical artistry of the pair chatting it up between stand-up sets by guest comics (who usually aren’t one of the #sooomanywhiteguys they often complain about). And of course there’s Tig Notaro, who in 2012 walked on stage and launched into her now legendary viral set—“Hello. Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?”—and proceeded to fill in the details of a rough year that included the surprise death of her mother, a break-up with her girlfriend, a C. diff infection, and a diagnosis of Stage 2 cancer in both breasts.

I could go on.

Now, it seems, we’re entering an era where societal shifts in what we consider funny and who gets to be funny are making more space for all sorts of new voices. These are comics that are tackling the taboo—making provocative observations on race, sex, death, money, politics. But they’re doing it from the perspective of those who were usually the punchlines, not the comedians on stage.

At their noblest essence, comedians have always been cultural soothsayers. They levy critiques that let them be voices for the voiceless, prophets of public ills, conduits of catharsis. Despite all the challenges to the status quo in comedy, none of this core has gone away. The changes we’re seeing aren’t killing comedy. They’re just letting more people in on the jokes.

The post Political Correctness Isn’t Killing Comedy, It’s Making It Better appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“What do you call a black woman who’s had seven abortions? A crime fighter! … Now I’ve gotta do a Hispanic [sic] joke to even things out … How many Hispanics [sic] does it take to clean a bathroom? None! That’s a nigger’s job!” [Audience members groan, laugh, cheer, applaud.]

The jokes baffled me—how does Lampanelli, who is white, get away with performing these in front of a national audience without being booed off stage and being forced to enter the witness protection program? Lampanelli claims she’s not really a racist and has “good intentions.” But was that all there was to it?

Lampanelli’s routine aired only a few months after Michael Richards’ infamous Laugh Factory disaster, in which the former Seinfeld star unleashed a torrent of racial slurs and insults at a black audience member that lightly heckled his performance. His comments were recorded and soon broadcast around the world. Following his viral blunder, Richards swiftly apologized, noted he was “not a racist,” and also emphasized his “good intentions.”

At the time I watched these performances, I had recently decided to apply to graduate school to research the relationship between race and comedy. As a young man, I had heard the racist jokes told by fellow undergrads and was fascinated by the way they forged and broke social relations. Major public spectacles like these only confirmed my suspicion that this humor was part of a wider public problem. I took the Richards’ incident as a godsend. Well, not really. But examining these types of controversies, and comparing them to performances that didn’t draw as much ire, provided a revealing look into the changing nature of race-talk in American comedy.

Overall, there has been a significant shift in the acceptability of racist speech in public, including under the guise of humor, since the civil rights movement. Take, for instance, the roast of Whoopi Goldberg at the Friars Club in 1993 in which Ted Danson appeared in blackface, performed a series of black stereotypes, and made liberal use of the “n-word.” The performance horrified many in attendance, and the private club famous for its no-holds-barred celebrity roasts issued its first-ever public apology in response. It’s worth remembering that only a few decades earlier, blackface was one of the most popular forms of comedy in the country. The shift from “funny” to “racist” didn’t occur on its own. It took years of opposition and protest from the targets of such racial ridicule.

But in studying the evolution of race in humor, I’m seeing an increasing number of white comics “successfully” making use of racial stereotypes and slurs, despite complaints by some comics and critics who suggest that we’ve all become censoriously hypersensitive and have gone “too far” with all the “PC nonsense.” Think Lisa Lampanelli, Louis C. K., Neal Brennan, Nick Kroll, Amy Schumer, and Jeff Dunham. Sure, there are certain jokes that don’t fly and apologies sometimes follow, but there’s something that’s happening that is allowing these comics to get away with telling these jokes.

To better explore these new bounds in modern comedy, I decided to get my answers from the ground: I enrolled in comedy school. What I learned was incredibly revealing. Over the period of several months in 2008 and 2009, instructors at a reputable L.A.-based comedy school taught my classmates and I not only about the mechanics of comedy writing, but also the social rules that govern its practice.

One of the first things I noticed were the differences between how teachers coached white versus non-white comedy students on the subject of race. Unlike students of color, who were encouraged to use racial stereotypes frequently, uncritically, and unapologetically (at least as applied to their own groups), white students were taught to tread racial matters carefully and strategically. Since the Richards incident was fresh in our collective memory, our instructor—a white male—reminded white students not to make racial slurs and stereotypes central to their acts. But he also noted that the biggest payoffs in the industry often come from provoking the taboo without crossing the line, and didn’t steer students away from approaching controversial topics.

To do that, the teacher taught students to employ tricks like creating characters—a friend, a family member, a stranger—who would “tell” the joke with racial stereotypes or slurs for them. The character would serve as a buffer between the performer and the ownership of the statement. He also advised students to ridicule themselves and expose some of their own vulnerabilities before pivoting to material about those outside their own identity groups. For white students, this self-deprecation allowed them to become “equal opportunity offenders,” a common ploy used in comedy that relies on the defense that if you’re ridiculing everyone, you’re not really bigoted.

Pay close attention to any “successful” race-based comedy routine over the last five decades and you’ll see these strategies in action. From Don Rickles to Louis C.K., approaches like those taught in my comedy school act as a magician’s sleight of hand that go unseen by the untrained eye.

But does it really matter that comics can still get a laugh from some racist jokes? Sure, delivery and intent are mitigating factors, but the inescapable question is whether the jokes are pointing out the absurdity of their racist content, or in fact perpetuating it.

Take, for example, that Lampanelli quip where she “jokingly” equates black abortions with crime fighting. The joke told on stage isn’t one that simply remained in the comedy club. This laugh line, and variations of it, have turned up on multiple white supremacist websites, where it reinforces their racist ideas that African-Americans are naturally more prone to criminality. It also turned up in a 2015 Department of Justice probe, where it was one of several racist jokes found in emails circulating among police officers and court officials in Ferguson, Missouri.

The DOJ reported that this and other forms of racist humor served as evidence of “impermissible bias” among members of the city’s municipal courts and police force—an atmosphere that contributed to a pattern of unconstitutional policing in the community. Similar investigations of police departments across the country reveal a pattern of racist (as well as sexist and homophobic) humor circulating among officers. Though the jokes themselves don’t cause the bigotry, they certainly help justify and perpetuate these prejudiced belief systems. It is rather revealing that those who suggest we grow “thicker skins” and learn to “take a joke” tend to ignore such occurrences.

Not all comics are clamoring for a pushback to political correctness; some comedians are leading the charge against racist jokes. Reflecting on her own past reliance on racial humor, Sarah Silverman recently noted that some “racial jokes that were just trying to be absurd” have “less charm” given the current environment where our nation is confronting issues of police brutality against minorities.

The times continue to change, and comedy will continue to adapt. Those who challenge racist jokes aren’t waging a war against comedy. They are just recognizing that in a society still struggling to achieve basic justice and equality for racial and ethnic minorities, such jokes only add insult to injury.

The post When Bigoted Humor Isn’t Just a Joke appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.