On 22 August 2015, California police removed ten Black women from the Napa Valley Wine Train (Rocha 2015). The Wine Train company, which offers luxury dining along historic rail routes in California wine country, accused the women – members of a book club – of disturbing their fellow passengers by ‘laughing too loudly’. This incident generated international media attention and inspired the Twitter hashtag #laughingwhileblack that highlighted other incidents of white hostility towards Black laughter. Such a preoccupation with the styles, patterns and volumes of Black laughter is not new, as the laughter of Black Americans has long constituted a site of intense white anxiety and attempts at regulation (Chasar 2008; Parvulescu 2010: 59–77). Indeed, as scholar of American popular culture Mike Chasar notes, ‘we must recognize the extent to which race relations in the United States have been conducted via African American laughter’ (Chasar 2008: 60).

In light of this history, the current chapter seeks to determine how a critical theory of laughter can speak to and illuminate laughter's role in racial politics (particularly American racial politics).