A reviewer said:
She depends on the assumption that only someone secure in his or her own lack of racism would dare to make, or to laugh at, a racist joke, the telling of which thus becomes a way of making fun simultaneously of racism and of racial hypersensitivity.

At least for me, this is not true at all. Her racial hypersensitivity jokes make me laugh precisely because it's an uncomfortable subject for me.

would you laugh if the person telling the joke was in a white hood?

It depends if they were wearing it ironically.

Are you implying that we only laugh because we're not having the racist aspect ground into our skulls? Or that we only laugh because she's Jewish?

mostly that we laugh cuz she's jewish (a handy substitue for assuming she isn't anti-semitic, possible "self-hating jews" aside). it puts us in a comfort zone; same w/ Borat. mostly, i just honestly didn't believe what you wrote, Lorelei. Someone wearing a KKK outfit saying (non-jokingly) the same things as either SS or SBC would be horrifying: thus, not MORE funny b/c you're MORE uncomfortable.

the line is thin between meta-bigotry and actual, and the cultural backgrounds of SS, SBC, Chappelle, et al, do put me at ease enough to laugh along with them. but the jokes they tell are funny because of my unccomfortableness with the subject matter. the provide a release for racial/social/ethnic tension that pervades our lives. a man in a white hood saying the same jokes would be seeking to foment the tension, negating the humor.

unless he was wearing the hood ironically. which would be amazing!

Well, Liam beat me to it. Don't forget Carlos Mencia -- racial humor but without the humor!

Have you seen Jesus Is Magic? There's a bit where Silverman is walking through a parking lot, singing a song that includes the line (paraphrasing) "Maybe it's like how black guys call each other 'nigger.'" Just then, she catches sight of two tough-looking black guys. They look unamused. She stops smiling and there is clearly tension. After a long moment, the black guys smile, she smiles again, but then they stop smiling and so does she. I described all that because it's a good example of what I like about this kind of humor: lots of white liberals get really anxious about discussing race or using, say, the n-word even in a non-slur context, and I appreciate that there's someone out there making fun of us for it and making fun of the whole situation, which IS pretty ridiculous.

Someone wearing a KKK outfit saying (non-jokingly) the same things as either SS or SBC would be horrifying: thus, not MORE funny b/c you’re MORE uncomfortable.

Well, clearly if they are not joking, I am unlikely to interpret it as funny. But hmm, there are people who WOULD say that stuff as a joke who I wouldn't laugh at because I suspect they truly believe it. So maybe you're right and she only gets permission to explore these issues because she's Jewish. But I still don't think you can equate her with a nonironic career racist. Context is important.

I think there are other questions too, like: regardless of how secure I feel about being non-bigoted, I feel very secure in my intentions, but I can imagine someone equal secure in their intentions but with radically different intentions than me. And so I'm interested in how they react to this kind of humor (like I've heard before, don't know if it's true, that Chappelle got uncomfortable with who might have been in his audience). An interesting comparison is between Silverman and Michael Richards with his little outburst not too long ago (comparison made by Michael Musto in Village Voice I believe: http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0704,musto,75611,15.html).

I watched Sarah Silverman's show last night and thought it was was phenomenal. OK, there were a lot of ka-ka jokes. But the humor was fresh, new, twisted. The writing was really fabulous.