Psych's Comedic Tale of Black–White Friendship and the Lighthearted Affect of “Post-Race” America

Abstract

I analyze the popular television comedy Psych to examine the affective dimensions of one type of post-race comedy. Psych, an interracial buddy narrative, adapts the assimilationist situation comedy to rhetorically intensify post-race ideology by encouraging a lighthearted, breezy attitude toward race and racism. Psych reassures audiences of their distance from racism, and confirms the “secular orthodoxy” of interracial friendship, a depoliticizing ideology that views friendship as the antidote to structural and historical injustice. I analyze three distinct modes of racial humor in Psych: witticisms that mock “PC”; comedic framings of blackness; and representations of interracial bonding that conjure post-race fantasies of black–white sameness and interchangeability. I conclude by examining Psych's role in USA Network's character-centric branding identity that frames race and racism as superficialities that we must “see beyond” in our pursuit of a utopian post-race state. This message is problematic because it locates politics in the sphere of friendship and feeling, limiting attention to historical and structural dimensions of racial injustice.