On Michael Richards, Racial Authenticity, and the “N-word”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores Black comics’ responses to Michael Richards’s infamous racist rant at The Laugh Factory (a well-known Los Angeles comedy club) in 2006. Following Richards’s cell-phone-recorded tirade, the club’s owner, Jamie Masada, temporary fined all comics who used the “n-word” onstage. African American comedians’ public and private responses to this gesture were as mixed as they were insightful. Onstage, several Black comics joked about what “authentic” or “real” Black folks would’ve done had they witnessed Richards’s outburst firsthand. (Here, their bids to authenticity provided an affective release and reassertion of who we [Black folks] are or can be in the face of pain and disrespect.) Backstage, however, most Black comics were surprisingly empathetic toward Richards even as they critiqued his rant as racist and inexcusable. They also vetted questions concerning comics’ freedom of speech and lambasted the racial politics plaguing the professional comedy scene, delimiting who and what “real” “Black” comics and standup comedy, respectively, can be or do.