It is with much amusement that I take to being called a racist, which I have sometimes been called. And usually, such mislabelling follows a "racist" joke I would either make myself, or would laugh at, were it to be made by someone else. (The label is usually worse, and quicker, when I make a joke about gas-chambers and a swastika tattoo.) But that is as stupid as calling Iran an anti-Semitic nation for hosting an international conference to discuss the Holocaust.
The problem with such quick-to-label-someone-racist people is that when they hear a racist joke, they hear the racist bit more than the joke bit, and assume that everyone else does the same and then go on to assume that the elicited laughter was focussed at the racist bit rather than the joke bit. And if the laughter was aimed at the racist bit, its still a fucking joke, right? I mean, how dis-similar is it from making jokes about any stereotype? The trouble is to make a good joke, in fact, since there are too many trite ones now which have been heard hundreds of times.
In the same way, discussing the Holocaust does not condone the atrocities committed against the Jews by the Nazis, or any other atrocity anywhere at any time. All it does is try to understand the actual extent and nature of what happened at the time without involving the usual history that the victors always write. (And lest anyone have any doubts, the victors in this case were very pliable by the Jew lobby which supplied more-than-significant sums of money to finance the machinations to halt the Nazi world takeover bid.)
A joke some of you may have heard from me, in another form though:
A big fat white American (bfwA), a humongous nosed Jew (hnJ) and a pants-hanging-off-the-knees black man (p-h-o-t-k bm) are all taking a piss in a john somewhere. bfwA finishes, zips up, rolls over to the washbasin, pumps out a handful of soap, washes off with a gallon of water, and as is drying his hands with a whole box of tissue, says, "In my people, they teach us to be hygienic."
hnJ finishes, zips up, ambles over to the sink, takes a squirt of soap, only as much water as he needed (which wasn't much) and while handling his single paper-towel, says, "In my people, they teach us to be frugal."
p-h-o-t-k bm finishes, zips up, puts his hands in his pockets and as he is swaggering towards the door, says, "In my people, they teach us not to piss on our hands."
So how racist was that?
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6 comments:
confusing subject and object, intent and description. racism is not negative, but the connotations induced are. makes one higher than the other. all discrimination is negative, for instance, but that takes a dig at identity, few are those that want to dig deeper and find out why. your joke's not racist, or funny, just makes me smirk, useless stereotypes, not race, but popular culture, low intelligence self-centric individual morons appreciate this.
projection and interpretation. can't help what they interpret, but you're right, it's what they actually listen to within what they hear. that's the crux. so maybe this post ain't about racism, but how people hear within what they listen, back to the egg, or chicken, mental conditioning. dig deeper anthropologist.
tengu, desist from your bid to ask me to "dig deeper" into everything i say. you love complexities, not me. your are right, this post wasn't about racism, but then who ever said it was? believing in a stereotype is stupid, and maybe racist by extension. but making fun of it by a joke or some such is merely having fun. it does not need digging deeper.
bourdieu would be proud. but one should be able to have a laugh. and yet what is it that is interwoven with language? it's not complex. it's just awareness off, simple things, engraved into mundane stereotypes, just as political correct language creates the persona who won't laugh at your joke, and then all of it isn't so funny anymore. but you're right, fun is fun and nothing more.
screw bourdieu man, doesn't need bringing in everywhere just because he was good. increased awareness is what leads to increased knowledge, adding layers and swathes of factors to any given event, situation, thing, place, person, point of view, etc making it more complex. but it only happens when you choose to always employ all your awareness about any given matter.
get off your bum you lazy old git. it doesn't add layers, it takes them away, until their essence(s) is laid bare. simplicity is in awareness. ignorance is bliss precisely because it makes everything out to be complex, rendered unaware to the beholder. no, not just to have the final word, but to bring it back to where you started, to those that took stereotypes and gassed several million people because they found it necessary, fulfilling their racial destiny. or those hundreds of thousands of 'others' who have been butchered because of the concept of race or ethnicity. communication may well be about what you hear, but it also regards what is said. language contains something, but you miss it completely even though your post oozes with it. assuming responsibility for what is uttered is different from being able to laugh at oneself and the world surrounding, but it matters just as 'much'. that's the problem with people who don't give a fuck. they only want to have a laugh, all else is dismissed because the opportunity is dressed like a workman in overalls and involves work, and what's the fun in that?
i have said this millions of times, just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to. one has to also be aware, in all their infinite awareness, of when to employ the awareness and when to leave it well alone. so before you assume what i completely miss, understand the idea of someone else's point of view being as complete as yours in any given subjective matter.
and you can't have the final word, its my blog, remember? :p
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