Race Relations & Comedy

Another unfinished proposal.  It is actually a methodology section with a little bit of a literature review.  If you would like to use any part of it feel free.

Casey Johnson

Chapter 2

Methodology

            Yo’ momma is sooo fat that she got on a scale and it said “To Be Continued”.  Yo’ momma is sooo old she was in Jesus’ yearbook.  This art of verbal insult called playing the dozens is an African American communicative practice of playful conversation that at the same time reveals critical truths.  Often times in a game of the dozens, “Yo’ momma” is the subject matter, where in actuality disrespecting someone’s momma could get you injured or maybe worse in many cases (Smitherman 1997).  It is funny when I reflect on the fact that by brother and I who have the same mother frequently engaged in the dozens.  What’s even funnier is that my mother and my father found it entertaining and often took a shot themselves.  The former dozens punches are two of my favorites.  Of course we were not serious, but I want to demonstrate that comedy can be a constructive, critical, and even a gratifying means for realization that spares the tenderness of human sentiments.  

Comedy and Humor are part of a tradition that engages an aesthetic understanding self-evident truism.  The business of comedy is to dramatize and thus make more vivid and immediate the paradoxes of society (Feibleman 1938).  African American cultural practices derived from traditions of African lineage, emphasize the art of the spoken word and the art of storytelling.  African fables were often critical anecdotes that used animals to tell a story with a moral.  The only way to contest the story was to admit you possessed the human deficit revealed in the fable.  Many African Americans came to embody humor as a facet of their double consciousness; to adapt to the predicament of being black in America (Katz 1996).   Thus, the topic of my research is the intersection of race relations and comedy.  I hypothesize that comedy is a progressive outlet for addressing race relation’s issues.  One set back in race relations is derived from the power relations between racial groups.  Where power is disproportionate, the group with less power is more subject to negotiating their demands.  Comedy can be a platform for equality because all racial and ethnic groups are subject to jokes.  Some comedy may be offensive to some people because some comedians have no limits or censors, any one/group can be vulnerable to humility.  I said comedy was a progressive outlet because political issues are often discussed in comedy and hegemonic enterprises are often criticized, however comedians want their audiences to relate to the irony as much as possible so that hey will laugh, and so that they will laugh comedians may be extreme or idealist.  If nothing more, comedy can help us to understand each other, to laugh is to understand, thus comedy is a bases for understanding and hence progress.  Comedy is a school of thought.  Comedy is transformative, constructive, and critical.  It energizes partakers towards knowing reality.  Its face validity is its click of recognition, “yes of course”, laughing, and relating.  Verification comes through the “eureka factor”, a rational analysis of spontaneous recognition that is intersubjective validity (Creswell 1998).  Here I will note the importance of the oral tradition and expression to African and African American culture in particularly.  Comedy is a part of this tradition and a powerful form of expression that empowers and gives voice to many.  Furthermore, comedy provides a framework for racilized perspectives and can therefore depending on its salience, impact racial attitudes and race relations. 

Employing the qualitative component reflexivity, I would argue that quantitative an qualitative research are equally valid (depending on the topic of study) and can be used to compliment each other.  However, quantitative methods better accommodate my research interest.  Qualitative research produces insight from diverse experiences and legitimizes non-dominant epistemologies, often giving voice to those who have been silenced and acknowledging the validity their realities.  

Although in-depth interviews, descriptive observations, and other methods that yield descriptive data, have been employed as far back as any history, qualitative research was not signified as such until it gained its popularity at the Chicago school in 1910 up until its sensational decline in 1940.   Since its conception into social research, qualitative methodology has faced confrontational appraisal due to its positivistic deficiencies.  The use of qualitative methods reemerged in the 1960s, more accepted into applied fields (Taylor and Bogdan 1998).  Today, qualitative research is reaching the prevalence of its quantitative counter, where their various forms continue to be distinguished by researchers (Creswell 1998).  Where positivist or quantitativist seek facts pertaining to social phenomena, qualitative methodologist focus in on the subjective states of individuals; what phenomena mean to actors in the social world (Taylor and Bogdan 1998). 

            Qualitative research can exist in many diverse forms.  Here I will describe a few of these qualitative inquiry methods.  A biography is one form, where the author tells the story reconstructing the experiences of a single individual.  A phenomenology enlists a researcher to interpret meanings and produce themes from descriptive materials.  A researcher may use a grounded theory approach to qualitative methods that take on a scientific, objective, and systematic format.  Case studies are another form of qualitative methods.  Cases of phenomena are bounded by place and time and multiple resources are used to provide a detailed picture of phenomena in that temporal setting.   The last form described here is an ethnography in which the author tells his story informally, using extensive detailed descriptions to explore themes in the every day lives of persons (Creswell 1998).  Qualitative methodology can utilize many of these forms in triangulation.

            With an understanding of its history and its diverse forms, still, what is qualitative research and methodology?   I offer the following consensus of authors Creswell (1998), Miles and Huberman (1994), Flick (1998), and Hammersely (1992) as an inter-subjective sum of the essential features of qualitative research.  Qualitative research entails contact to real life situations.  Social relationships and social phenomena are at the center of qualitative research.  Also, qualitative research involves reflexivity; it strives for internal validity, and searches for meaning behind the social.  It is often a prolonged study in a natural setting that is subject to interpretation.  Qualitative research prescribes an inductive rather than a deductive analysis.  Qualitative research attempts to encompass a holistic overview of a situation.  Furthermore, Qualitative research involves collecting words and pictures, a focus on participant views, expressive and persuasive linguistics, and embededness in the research.  Qualitative research is explanatory, flexible, and inclusive of a variety of methods.

                         Qualitative researchers approach their studies with a particular paradigm or worldview, a basic set of beliefs or assumptions that guide inquires (Creswell 1998).  The ideological perspective for this study is a critical perspective.  A critical approach helps people to be aware of the conditions of their existence (Creswell 1998).  My approach as well resembles constructivism where I adopt a relativist position and reconstruct understandings.  I will use this distinct approach in aim of sparking a realization about society that will encourage transformations of social relations.  The ontological issue, or way of being, addresses the nature of reality for the qualitative researcher.  The ontological assumption for this study is that reality is a set of multiple mental and social constructions.  Although shared, they are local and specific and dependent for their form and content on the groups holding them, which is relativism.  Also, reality is shaped by factors such as social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender.  Overtime, these structures become real, that is historical realism (Guba and Lincoln 1994).  Epistemology, or way of knowing, addresses the relationship between the researcher and that being researched (Creswell 1998).  For this study the epistemological assumption is that findings are created interactively between the researcher and subjects, that is transactional and subjectivist (Guba and Lincoln 1994).  Axiological assumptions concern the role of values.  Values play an important role in this research and create outcomes.  The values of the subject and I, the researcher, are given equal weight (Guba and Lincoln 1994).  The rhetorical assumption or language for this study is the voice of a passionate participant, actively engaged in multi-voiced reconstruction.  Changes come when reconstructions are facilitated and individuals are motivated to act in it.  Another facet of the paradigm is the role of ethics.  For this research, ethics are intrinsic.  The research is to be transformative.  Deception is considered unethical because it is destructive to the aim of uncovering improved constructions (Guba and Lincoln 1994).  The last paradigm assumption discussed here, is the methodological assumption, or how one conceptualizes the entire research process.  In qualitative research, the researcher starts inductively.  Dialogue between the researcher and subject are needed.  This dialogue is dialectical in order to uncover myths changing them to informed consciousness with hope of transforming those involved.  (Guba and Lincoln).    

            Qualitative research can have flexible methodology.  The proposed methodology for this study is a triangulation of various methods.  Triangulation as well increases validity.   It is the procedure of converging information as an effort toward confirming dubious data (Creswell 1998).  I will use various facets of qualitative methodology, but for the purpose of having evaluative criterion I will label these facets in accordance to prescribed qualitative terminology.  My research will entail ethnographic characteristics.  By that I mean it will be written as a “realist tale”, a report that provides direct matter of fact portraits of cultures (Creswell 1998).  An ethno-methodology will as well be incorporated which is where aspects of the subject matter and methodology overlap.  The relationship between the observer and observed is important to ethno-methodology.  There is no greater claim to truth than any other version of realty and it involves finding out people’s lives through people themselves, listening to how people frame their lives and worlds.  Ethno-methodology examines the world from different points of view with no inherent hierarchy of credibility Ethno-methodologies place a particular emphasis on culture as patterns of daily living; behaviors, language, and artifacts are some aspects of the culture that can be offered up to analysis (Creswell 1998).

Data Collection and Sample

            Creswell (1998) visualizes data collection as a series of interrelated activities aimed at gathering good information to answer emerging research questions.  For an ethnographic study such as this one, the data collection sites are where “intact culture sharing” groups have developed shared values, beliefs, and assumptions (Creswell 1998).  For this study the site of data collection will be urban comedy functions open to the public and on my couch in front of the television. From these localities, I will produce themes regarding the intersection of race relations and comedy.  My data collection sites permit me to forgo many issues surrounding gaining access and rapport in qualitative research.  For an ethnographic study, access typically begins with an individual who has insider status with a cultural group, that is the gatekeeper.  For this study I am the gatekeeper.  Also, ethical issues that emerge from interaction with human subjects are less problematic because my method of data collection minimizes deception and other potentially harmful impacts on subjects.  My sample of comedy shows, live and on television/film will be selected based on their popular tendencies, “the show everyone is going to see”, for example the Kings of Comedy is popular because African American culture and comedy culture deem the comedians involved as comedy pioneers.  I, myself, the researcher, am mutually associated with both cultures and I therefore have insight as to what is popular urban comedy.  Where my data collection sites are easily accessible, time and cost demands for the sampling and collection procedures are less consuming.  Paper and writing utensils will be my primary apparatus for collection of data and a tape recorder may be used at the comedy shows if they are permitted.  Furthermore, themes will be generated from the data based on their association with the review of literature.       

Bibliography

Creswell, John W.  1995.  Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design.  Sage Publications.

Feibleman, James.  1938.  The Meaning of Comedy.  The Journal of Philosophy.

Katz, Jack.  1996.  Families and Funny Mirrors: A Study of Social Construction and

Personal Embodiment of Humor.  The University of Chicago. 

Smitherman, Geneva.  1997.  “The Chain Remain the Same”: Communicative Practices

In the HipHopNation.  Journal of Black Studies.

Available at class website:

Flick, Uwe.  1998.  Qualitative Research: Relevance, History, Features.

Guba and Lincoln.  1994.  Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research.

Hammersley. 1992.  Deconstructing the Qualitative Quantitative Divide.

May, Tim. 2002.  Introduction: Transformation in Principles and Practice.

Miles and Huberman.  1994.  Introduction.

Taylor and Bogdan.  1998.  Go to the People.