I have always marveled at the “black woman laugh.” This is not a hysterical or deep laugh that ripples through your body. I mean the laughter that sits ready at the surface to comment on the irony and hypocrisy witnessed daily in black life. In black women, this laugh is an audible breath that escapes as what Irving Goffman has called a response cry – a ritualized act and dramatization that displays alignment with events and others (1981: 100). It occurs as a surprise even to the speaker, as though she didn't know that opening her mouth would reveal what lay beneath the layers of her memory and longing. I have heard it many times. It was there after a researcher asked Rebecca, a young, pregnant black woman in Los Angeles, how she felt about her health care. Before her car broke down, it took only twenty minutes for Rebecca to get to the doctor's office. Now she has to wait for two buses and it takes two hours to get there. Then, after sitting in the waiting room for another two hours, she spends five minutes with the doctor. To the question do you like to visit the doctor Rebecca responded, “Yes, I like my doctor (laugh). He's good (laugh).”

What is this laugh about? I also heard it in a conversation when two women in Chicago talked about their trip to New Orleans and marveled at what they referred to as “the beautiful, wonderful and courteous black men.”