This dissertation investigates the relationship between legal and comedic discourse of the racialized family. Historically, legal sanctions have restricted who could marry whom, shaping what Americans and American families have looked like by determining whose genes could merge with whose. Experiences within and between families have provided fodder for comedians, whose material has reached wide audiences, serving as a normalizing discourse and as a record of families' day-to-day operations. Revolving around discontent, tensions, and even danger within families, comedy has revealed a sharp distinction between legal discourse about the family and everyday experiences within families, I contend. What matters for those who preach about the sanctity of family is not the health of individuals or the quality of familial relationships, but the value system which benefit most from the perpetuation of that institution.

I go about making this argument by citing how common sense served as the guiding light in determining who was white and thus able to naturalize in a series of Supreme Court rulings, even when common sense was contradicted by science. In an era when anti-miscegenation laws were still valid and when the privileges and immunities guaranteed by citizenship were denied to so many, these restrictions on who could naturalize are of utmost importance. Relying most heavily on Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, Richard Pryor's stand-up comedy, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar, and John Leguizamo's Spic-O-Rama, I attempt to show how comedy can reveal the shortcomings of common sense views about the family—that restricting who could marry whom on the basis of race has done little to help individuals, with families being so traumatizing (and even deadly) at times. In each of these texts, families fail to live up to the ideal notion of the family as an institution, oppressing their members, especially women and children; yet the institution of the family lives on. In that sense, the language of protecting the family has been just that—language; any real attempt to protect the family needs to protect the individuals who comprise families. Without such protections, families will continue to be a major source of comedy as comedians attempt to make sense of their own experiences.