| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation considers how contemporary satirical works by Black artists levy a substantive critique of white supremacy by exposing the illogic of “post-race” rhetoric popularized during the Obama era. “Post-race” is a belief that the U.S. has moved “beyond” race into a colorblind utopia, free from the cultural baggage of racism and its violent history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and white power movements. To combat claims of “post-race,” many Black artists took to satire—a genre that lampoons societal ills through humor, irony, and invective to inspire improvement—and exposed “post-race” rhetoric as rooted in racial terror that functions to further entrench white supremacy in American society and its institutions. My readings of Obama era Black satire speak to the invisible norm of whiteness by laying bare its modalities of terror through absurdity, chaos, and horror. First, I contextualize “post-race” America by tracing the development of satire, U.S. race relations, and African American cultural production up through the “post-race” era. Then, I examine several texts against the historical backdrop of white fright—fear of being outnumbered, out-performed, and outshined by a racial other—to expose how this underlying fear continues to maintain white supremacy in the “post-racial” age. Ultimately, I show how Black artists trouble whiteness, disrupting conventional notions of racialized power and privilege to force a reckoning with America’s past. In this way, these artists dismantle the terrorizing and terrified regime of white supremacy. | en |
