Abstract

This article examines how the interrelationship between the postmodern condition and the post-racial myth has shaped the works of black satirists in the twenty-first century. The desire to erase race in American discourse—even as race remains a powerful ideological sign that operates in real, material ways to affect black life—has transformed the project of black satire in the new century. Focusing on selected sketches from Comedy Central’s Key & Peele, the article unpacks the ways in which contemporary black satire has forced a reconception of what the postmodern condition is for African Americans in the post-racial age.

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