Prudence and Racial Humor: Troubling Epithets

Prudence is an essential virtue in a contemporary racial culture marked by the contingencies and the paradoxical in/stability of race and racism. Recurring controversies surrounding racial epithets exemplify this clash between deeply entrenched racial meanings on one hand and shifting conventions on the other. I argue in this essay that racial humor presents a valuable site for understanding and practicing prudential reasoning and performance. Analyzing three episodes from popular texts-The Boondocks, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and South Park-I illustrate the way racial humor resists prescriptive reasoning and creates possibilities for audiences to practice prudence.