This article analyses Ali G through the concept of ‘liquid racism’. As a polysemic and elusive form, liquid racism requires reflexivity in order to critique it fully, and is a racism that, in media representation, often polarizes debate of its meaning. The article explains how academics have struggled to explain Ali G’s relationship to racism, how his ambiguity is complicated by some social actors seeing him as a real person, before it explains how Ali G expresses three strands of liquid racism. These are ‘postmodern minstrelsy’ — Ali G as a black man, ‘ethnocultural hybrid racism’ — Ali G as a white man pretending to be black, and ‘anti-Asian racism’ — Ali G as an Asian man pretending to be black. It is the combination of the three and the erasure they inflict on one another that creates liquidity. Finally, some non-racist themes in Baron Cohen’s comedy are outlined that encourage analytic confusion.
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