Is this video funny? Is it racist? The answers are not always clear and may say more about you than the video

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In a previous blog post, I argued that to determine if an expression of humor was racist, it is necessary to carefully examine its impact. In this post, I want to consider a particularly ambiguous case:

Is this video racist?

Let's start with a little background information: The video was produced by a person of African descent (the one who played Obama) and seems designed to make fun of Blagojevich, the former Governor of Illinois, rather than the President. To the degree that this intention is, in fact, perceived by viewers, the video can be said to poke fun of a subset of white Americans who think/act like Blagojevich (i.e., identify with Black culture), while at the same time showing that Obama can, if he chooses to, embrace this culture with ease and comfort.

Never mind that Black culture, like U.S. culture, is too diverse and multi-faceted to be encapsulated by a single stereotypical perspective. Even if we, for the sake of comedy, agree to equate Black culture with hip-hop culture, determining the impact of this video on viewers is no easy feat.

I said the video seemed designed to make fun of the Blagojevich, not Obama. I personally think it does so effectively, but the video shows a relationship of sorts between the President and the impeached (and disgraced) former Illinois governor. Who is to say that viewers with strong anti-Obama sentiments won't see in this video proof that the President, like the Governor, is corrupt, or that he is, in fact, more "Black" than he has let us believe? Who is to say that these viewers will not then perceive this video as evidence for what they've feared all along, that Obama is more invested in the interests of the Black community than in those of "Americans"?

Is this a stretch? Recent research suggests otherwise. Consider, for example, a 2009 study by LaMarre, Landreville, and Beam, which examined viewers' perceptions of the Colbert Report and found that

...conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements

While I think the study obscures the fact that sophisticated political observers on either side of the political divide are unlikely to find the Colbert Report ambiguous, it does offer relatively compelling evidence for the projective hypothesis - the notion, first introduced by Lawrence Frank in 1939, that "When people try to understand vague or ambiguous unstructured stimuli, the interpretation they produce reflects their needs, feelings, experience, prior conditioning, and thought processes."

The key is in the ambiguous content. Because of its ambiguity, a person can only determine what he/she sees by imposing (i.e., projecting) his/her self onto the content. This is the theoretical principle behind projective tests, like the Rorschach (ink blot) and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). That is, what a person sees in an ink blot reveals quite a bit about the person and nothing at all about the blot, because the blot is so ambiguous that it could be practically anything.

This video is not, of course, as ambiguous at an inkblot, but it's no less ambiguous as the TAT or, say, the Colbert Report.

This ambiguity makes it practically impossible to determine how it is perceived by viewers. One could, of course, design a study to do just that, and perhaps someone will. Until then, the best we can do is recognize that some viewers will laugh at Blagojevich and some will laugh at Obama and who does which is probably best explained by viewers' political beliefs, even though both Blagojevich and Obama are Democrats.

Is this video racist? Sometimes, it depends on who is watching it.

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Authors Website: http://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~lyubansk/

Authors Bio:

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., is a teaching associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches Psychology of Race and Ethnicity and courses on restorative justice.

Since 2009, Mikhail has been studying and working with conflict, particularly via Restorative Circles (a restorative practice developed in Brazil by Dominic Barter and associates) and other restorative responses to conflict. Together with Elaine Shpungin, he now supports schools, organizations, and workplaces in developing restorative strategies for engaging conflict, building conflict facilitation skills and evaluating the outcomes associated with restorative responses via Conflict 180.

In addition to conflict and restorative practices, Mikhail also has a long-standing interest (going back about 20 years) in race and racial dynamics and regularly explores these themes in his Psychology Today blog Between the Lines., as well as in contributions to a variety of anthologies on popular culture, ranging from Harry Potter to vampires to superheroes. In addition to OpEdNews, Mikhail's commentary has also appeared in a many other online publications, including Buzzflash, Jewcy, Colors, Race-Talk, Truthout, Tikkun, Alternet and The Huffington Post, and he has been a guest on a variety of radio programs, including Illinois Public Media and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Mikhail's academic work includes several book chapters and more than a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics such as racial identity, undocumented immigration, and restorative justice. Mikhail also recently co-edited an academic textbook: Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Age and, in 2006, co-authored a book on the Russian-Jewish diaspora: Building a Diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany, and the United States.

All material on this site published under his byline remains the property of Mikhail Lyubansky, copyright 2008-2016. Permission is granted to repost and distribute, with proper attribution.

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