Racialism and the Media. Venise T. Berry
boundaries often with stereotypical images and messages just under the surface. According to Amditis (2013), the continued use of racial stereotypes in humor today contributes to the preservation of the current racial hierarchy making the fight for a better racial climate more difficult.
The difficulty involved in identifying, processing, interpreting, comprehending, and retaining the subtle and symbolic undertones when exposed to humor is the key to understanding the ultimate harm that is done by the use of stereotypical tropes and tactics in comedy. (p. 5)
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Humor is usually based on stereotypical ideas and images. Stereotypes through humor provide easily recognized and understood historical impressions of how members of black culture might think and act. Unfortunately, when ethnic humor is based on normalized and accepted stereotypes racialism is involved and that means there is a problem with funny.
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