Dark Days for the First Amendment: It’s Less Safe to Laugh

By Don Allen for Journal of A Black Teacher

The First Amendment has always been America's shield and its sword. But recently, its shield has begun to bend at the pretense of selective outrage, and its sword is only brought out when it is convenient to do so.

Take two recent controversies. Jimmy Kimmel is a satirist who has pushed the boundaries of his comedy and has been canceled, losing his late-night show. What did he do to become intolerable? Did he tell a joke a little bit too close to home? Or was it merely that when comedy attacks the wrong power structure, it shifts from being simply entertainment to being seen as a "threat"? While the why is relevant, what really hits is the chilling effect: comedians are left wondering whether being funny is now a liability.

At the same time, an employee of Hennepin County joked about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on her Facebook page and went further to issue a dangerous call to violence. In my opinion, her language was grossly out of order, irresponsible, and destructive. However, this gets us to a tricky question: where is comedy and free expression? At what point is a joke a crime, and is a crime dressed up as a joke?

Frantz Fanon forewarned us in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) that colonized societies break apart human beings into violent binaries, and words and deeds are turned from expressions of opinion to instruments of a larger war. In present-day America, this message is hauntingly relevant. Our divisions, racial, political, and ideological, turn even comedy itself into battlegrounds. The comedian takes on the persona of a soldier, and the Facebook posting is the battleground.

The irony is, however, striking and ruthless: the United States puts itself forth as a bastion of free expression and speech, but it is the politics of power that determine whose speech and opinions are "protected" and whose are open to persecution and backlash. In yesteryears, comedy was one of the only remaining sanctuaries where people could openly satirize and critique those who are in positions of authority and get away with minimal serious consequences. However, with today's environment, comedians are walking carefully, like walking on eggshells, always fearing making the wrong move and risking losing their entire livelihood. As the political discussion environment grows sharper, angrier, and uncompromising from left and right sides of the political divide, it is irrefutably clear now that we are presently entering an era when we have less freedom to speak and find ourselves less safe when it comes to enjoying a laugh.

Why? Because, as Fanon argued, power rarely seeks balance. It seeks preservation. And when truth-tellers, or jesters, become inconvenient, power sacrifices them to maintain control. The powers have sold out to power itself. Institutions care less about freedom of thought and more about appeasing the loudest outrage.

We are embroiled in a dangerous paradox. A democracy falters when speech is unevenly policed, when satirists are silenced while the nastiness of politics poses as freedom of speech. The First Amendment was intended to shield dissent and satire equally, but in these dark days, it feels less a guarantor and more a gamble.

The warning I'd counsel is not silence, but recognition: we must teach ourselves and our students to distinguish comedy and cruelty, critique and incitement. Or else we are a culture in which everyone's view is suspect, everyone's joke is a crime, and everyone's truth is punished by power.