Kirsten's case for HBB balances its ambiguity: are we laughing at the family or with the family? Or both? Maybe it's impossible to answer since the onscreen characters know they are performers. It's always already a fiction. And what is the nature of the transgression? Obviously against middle class propriety. But anyone who has lived in close quarters as a family knows that basic body functions are known/referenced as part of common life. We just choose to ignore it or repress it most of the time. Or it becomes almost a sleight of hand. Does the baby need a diaper change? A pair of parents can make that determination and indicate who will do the change without missing a beat in front of guests. What's different here is that it's articulated in verbal and body language.

The media’s widespread and, to my mind, oddly celebratory characterization of Honey Boo Boo as “white trash entertainment” warrants some consideration. By putting the qualifier “white” in front of the word “trash,” such a description is clearly differentiating HBB’s particular form of “trash” from the more typical or expected form of “trash.” This distinction is a racial one, and it implies that what makes HBB different, noteworthy, truly funny, is that it is white folks (as opposed to brown folks) acting, well, “trashy.” Accordingly, the humor and potential pleasure derived from watching HBB is presented as originating within an anomaly of race: a white family that does not know how to perform their whiteness quite “right,” and instead acts like a (trashy) brown family. Along with the obvious reifying of racist stereotypes, this labeling of HBB and similar representations as “white trash entertainment” mistakes class for race. Such confusion is common in the media and integral to the way we conceptualize and perpetuate racial hierarchies and white privilege in the US generally. The problem isn’t that various distinctions between race and class are terribly tricky or difficult to discern, but rather that this obfuscation and confusion has been an effective way to naturalize gross systemic inequities that any truly civil and just society would otherwise address. In short, the social construction of race provides poverty with an alibi. An example: here in Los Angeles there are several poor communities where crime is rampant, schools are failing, infrastructure is crumbling, and jobs—like fresh and healthy food—are nearly nonexistent. These circumstances are a result of poverty, yet, because these communities comprise mainly people of color, the problem is typically discussed as one of race. When we shift the blame from class, or poverty, to race, we create a faulty cause and effect relationship. Through this faulty logic race becomes the cause of failing communities, families and individuals; it is transformed into the root of violence and the origins of school drop out rates; and, it offers an easy explanation for every manner of health-related problem present in these communities from obesity to high infant mortality. The fact that such faulty logic is applied only to poor communities of color makes the problem even worse. We do not discuss wealthy communities in terms of their more-often-than-not homogenous racialized makeup. These communities—whether primarily brown or white—are simply wealthy communities; they remain unmarked, or, as Roland Barthes puts it, “exnominated.” This is biological essentialism at its worst: poor communities of color fail because they are communities of color, and the social fictions of racial categorizations are transformed into biological destinies. But back to Honey Boo Boo. By characterizing representations such as Honey Boo Boo as, “white trash entertainment,” we fortify and extend a system of relative racial privilege that inherently positions whiteness as culturally and socially superior to brownness. And, by mistaking class for race we avoid recognizing the pervasive effects of poverty as they play out on the bodies and in the lives of individuals regardless of skin color.