Laughing Through Pain: The Role of Humor and Seriousness in Coping with Racial Discrimination:

Zaniyah Cooper Dr. Harris English 2017 23 April 2026 Introduction: Laughing Through Pain: The Role of Humor and Seriousness in Coping with Racial Discrimination: The definition of vernacular tradition in my personal dictionary would be how black people have different mannerisms, slangs, and performances that if you understand what it means then you get it, if you don’t you just don’t. When we are put in situations that tend to make us have a side-eye moment or taken aback, we tend to either tense up or make a joke to ease the pain from the situation. My question to the reader is, why are we always laughing through pain or tensing up to trauma? Why are we so easily turning the ball when the ball is something very heavy to pick up? Through my essay, I can explain this hypothesis and break down how vernacular tradition goes hand and hand with my topic as well. The Blend of Laughter and Seriousness: Have you ever hit the placement in your elbow, and it hurts like for a good hot minute, but at the same time you are laughing? People call that the funny bone, which is weird because you are laughing through a time where your feeling pain, but we tend to do that as well when we feel a sense of a racial slur or situations that black people tend to feel uncomfortable in. In this article, “Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom- “Black Laughter” by Lawrence W Levine, it has plenty of quotes that has enlighten me on the topic at hand. From the article it states,” Laughter was a compensating mechanism which enabled blacks to confront oppression and hardship:” It is our emotional salvation.” (page 2). We tend to use jokes, storytelling, wordplay and more to ease the situations we are put in, so we don’t become a stereotype of a black person who gets angry over” simple comments.” Sometimes jokes/humor has a way of being that reach for people to understand more than a book can. We can be able to use humor as a survival tool rather than just a joke, for example Eddie Murphy and his” White Like Me” skit was used to show people how much of an access that white people have in certain situations rather than a black person. Yes, the skit was very funny and was just easily just a joke, but that masked joke could have a meaning to it as well. Now with the characteristic of being serious I’m not talking about an army general like Major Payne, that doesn’t take anything from anybody. I’m referring to like a Fredick Douglas style of serious when it comes to tensing up to trauma. When you see Fredick Douglas picture, it looks the exact same in everyone from the hair, suit, and facial expression. In an article, it stated that he didn’t want to portray himself as a happy slave. In the times, they were living in of course yes, you would want to be happy that slavery has ended, but you are portraying a happy go lucky black person when racism is at a high it's like your happy in those conditions. He was the role model for the black culture during that time, so when they see this man dressing in business attire and a stern look it becomes a domino effect for the whole community. Being serious when being in situations that make you uncomfortable to me seems like a way to put a wall up between the person and your emotions. Sources: I did a bit of research to back up my opinions about how I feel about the fact on how black people will use humor or tense up when they are racially discriminated or in situations they are uncomfortable in. These articles have a plenty of similarities in them, which they are more research based, but you can still intertwin it with the topic. The race-based on humor examines how humor is related to race functions in social groups. Humor isn’t a neutral thing; it intertwines with social dynamics, identity, and power, which you could make the connection with the idea of humor masking deeper emotions. With two of the other articles, adolescents' experiences, emotions, and coping strategies and examining the relationship between racismrelated stress they have a simpler connection as well. People have different mannerisms (think of vernacular tradition) that are passed down, learned, and repeated to use jokes and a serious manner to cope with those situations. Sometimes the act of racism might not be a direct thing, maybe like a comment that has you pause, but most black people know how to turn the ball with their emotions which is the same thing of masking their emotions. Those two articles connect in a way because if you are taught how to not give the reaction that somebody wants you to give, but instead flip it and make it a funny thing you are not only repeating the cycle, but repeating the cycle of masking your emotions. The Blending of Vernacular Tradition and the Topic: Now that I have given you as the reader a little bit of research and articles that can back my hypothesis up, let me explain how it comes together in vernacular tradition. Black people don’t want to be a stereotype or feel like people are laughing at them, but with them. Sometimes we don’t know if we turned the situation into a humorous thing or shut down to avoid certain situations. We have gained the skill of emotional masking to have the joke as the center point, but the community understands the deeper meaning. At the same time, the skill of emotional resistant to avoid those things is because we know it could be taken as we are anger or we just not the group to be all fun and games, because if it were you on the other show, how would you feel? Without that shared language, cultural understanding, emotional masking, and emotional resistance, us trying to describe it or trying to get them to understand would be ten times harder to achieve or recognize. Works Cited Race-Based Humor and Peer Group Dynamics in Adolescence:Bystander Intervention and Social Exclusion - Kent Academic Repository Examining the relationship between racism-related stress and coping among Black adolescents - ScienceDirect How Frederick Douglass Harnessed the Power of Portraiture to Reframe Blackness in America | Artsy Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom- “Black Laughter” -Lawrence W Levine "The Ritual of Insult" Adolescents’ Experiences, Emotions, and Coping Strategies Associated With Exposure to Media-Based Vicarious Racism - PMC The Effects of Perceived Racism on Psychological Distress Mediated by Coping Strategies (BMC Psychology, 2017)