Just kidding? Humour, rhetoric and racial inference in newsletters of a San Francisco Bay Area South African group

Abstract

This article examines the use of humour in a San Francisco (SF) Bay Area South African social club's newsletter. It argues that the newsletters document the use of humour as a strategic discourse of South African whiteness and identity construction. Ultimately it demonstrates how various strategies of whiteness may be employed within a particular geographical site, as well as how quotidian South African discourses/resources contribute to the construction of a group's identity. Moreover, the newsletter employs humour, a significant rhetorical strategy of South African whiteness, and one that sometimes more obviously marks the group as racist. The examination of the SF Bay Area group newsletters’ use of humour, in large part, makes this article important in terms of what it says about white South African rhetorics and the role of humour in constructing white and ‘other’ racial South African identities. Humour in the newsletters, in conjunction with other rhetorical strategies of whiteness, works continually to construct whiteness/white identity, and otherness/other identities, keeping whiteness centered and representative of normative, civilised humanity. While offering numerous examples of humour from the newsletters, the author reflects on humour, racism and rhetoric, offering an initial theorisation of racial masking/inference.

Keywords:

• humour
• racial inference
• race
• South Africa
• whiteness

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott M. Schönfeldt-Aultman

Scott M. Schönfeldt-Aultman is associate professor at Saint Mary's College of California. [email protected]