Playing with Oppression: Latinx Students’ Use of Humor to Navigate Assumed Racism

Abstract

This article demonstrates how a group of Latinx students in a suburban high school use humor as an interactional strategy to negotiate and sometimes resist perceived racial meanings. Using ethnography, I find two distinct types of ambiguity central in such humor: (1) ambiguity in humor and (2) ambiguity in situational cues that prompt humor. The students interpret these often-ambiguous situational cues as relevant to racism and then use humor to play with assumed racism. Furthermore, they use humor in several distinct but not mutually exclusive forms: (1) preemptive testing, (2) constructing insider/outsider status, and (3) self-(re)defining. By integrating role theories in the analysis, I show the theoretical importance of analyzing both the social cues that prompt the humor and the humor itself. I suggest that such humorous interactions ultimately illuminate racial inequalities that usually remain undetected in interactions or in broader social contexts.