Racist, Sexist and other-ist Jokes

One time I opened a door for a lady. She was insulted and refused to go through, prefering me to go through and then open it herself. The funny thing was that when I opened the door I felt others behind me and simply held it open for them. At the time I opened the door I had no idea of the sex of the other people or even if it was one or more people.When I was about 18 or 19, several girl friends (friends that happened to be girls) burned their bras in protest. I suggested that it was a good first step but that being required to wear a blouse was every bit as oppressive. Unfortunately, I was not persuasive enough. The oppression continued.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

the thing is that humor assists us in dealing with things that we otherwise would ignore because it's too hard. by telling jokes (even racist, etc ones) we open the doors of communication on the subject. case in point. there are now at least three threads full of dicussion on racism, sexism, etc all spawned from jokes.

Ah, it's always good to have a mathematician around.Good insights, thanks.However, what the data doesn't record, and I personally wonder about, is the motivations of why the people killed, regardless of gender.While of course there are women who murder their intimate partners because they insanely want to control them, I wonder how many women kill because they see no way out of an abusive relationship.

Just wanted to point out that Dave Chappelle, whose entire routine seems limited to racism, sexism, and drug use, just got signed on for another two seasons at some phenomenal salary (something like $50million).Now when I say limited, I mean scope of topics. He manages to break ground within those topics so that everything seems fresh and funny. Oh I luv that guy, and am mad as hell they don't have him in Holland.But back to topic, it seems that sexist and racist jokes can be both popular and financially rewarding... oh yeah, and funny too.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Take Jeff Foxworthy, for example. He has made a living telling redneck jokes to REDNECKS. He gets his biggest laughs by making fun of his own audience.

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Old news I'm afraid; rich people always laugh at poor people. The same process turned "villager" into "criminal" (villein = villain).And in case you;re wondering about the people who are not so rich... laughing at those even lower creates artificial solidarity with the really rich. We like identify with our betters.And indeed, this is STILL a case of dehumanisation and preperation for violence, the violence against the poor, at the behest of the rich, and for the preservation of the rich.

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What do I do when black comedians make jokes about white people? I laugh my ass off (I am caucasian, btw).

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No shit. And you have not been raised in an environment in which such concerns presented a real, physical threat. Thats why you CAN find it funny: because you are safe.This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-04-2004 10:09 AM

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When we try to teach very young children about complex moral issues, we usually oversimplify things so they at least get the overall message if not every subtle nuance. It's expected that, as the children gain maturity, their capacity to understand these issues more fully will develop. Then they will realize that the ethical world is made up of a variety of gray areas that originally seemed black and white to them.

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Thats very true. Unfortunately, some people seem to emerge from this process wqithout realising any of the nuances and complexities, and resort purely to their own self-described intent. They ignore issues surrounding timee, place, cultural identity, social structures, and instead retain thier childish response "I didn;t mean to offend".

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Unfortunately, not everyone is as mature and realistic as we expect.

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You have made that abundantly apparent, MrHambre.

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Our pal contracycle here has asserted that humor targeting races or genders (among other things, I assume) is "hate speech," which he asserts is not a protected form of expression in the Constitutional sense.

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Please remember your constitution is an entirely local issue and not my concern.

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He says that such jokes are the mere prelude to the systematic dehumanization of genocide, and those of us who take part in this joking are supporting the extermination of the people about whom we're joking. I am in no way suggesting that racist or sexist jokes are never told with the intention to demean others. I am suggesting that it is our responsibility in a free society to realize that even the most insulting and offensive speech is still mere speech. Freedom of speech that extends to only the opinions or ideas that we agree with is not freedom of speech.

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And a child says "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me". Thats a lie; systematic propaganda can and does create the environment of dehumanisation that brought about both the Nazi genocide and Abu Ghraib. Again, this argument is naively premised on a total absence of social systems of legimiacy and reinforcement; it is a hopelessly unrealistic, Utopian argument.The next section doesn't need much comment from me. First MrJHambre says:

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In the case of those of us who don't support racist or sexist measures in public policy, I guess contracycle would say that we’re unwitting minions of the Hate Conspiracy, being gradually brainwashed by our own hate rhetoric to despise (and later eliminate) the targets of our bad jokes. In the case of people who have told jokes about their own ethnic group or gender, contracycle must feel that this is indicative of suicidal self-loathing, and these people are actively preaching destruction of their own kind.

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and then, failing to detect the irony, he goes on to say:

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This is the kind of shallow, irrational thinking we deplore in Creationists

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Indeed, MrHambre, indeed.

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and I don’t share his mistrust of the intentions of intelligent people here at EvC.

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you think intelligent people can't be bigots? Why is that?

Since you seem to despise the jokes presented in this thread and through very odd logic seem to lump those who tell the jokes with active participants of violence (without presenting supporting statistics i.e. those who tell jokes are statisticall more likely to commit race or sex based crime)why don't you tell a joke that YOU find funny. Or is it your contention that all forms of humor are a cause of violence?

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We like identify with our betters

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So being rich makes someone "our" betters? How offensive.

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Thats why you CAN find it funny: because you are safe.

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So when Peter Sellers dismounts from the parallel bars and falls down a stairwell in the Pink Panther movie The Return of the Pink Panther, I only laugh because I feel safe that I will never fall or experience an accident? Or is it because I plan genocide against clumsy and stupid people because I only identify with people who never make mistakes?

contracycle,Your outlook here is completely incoherent and incomprehensible.First here you say that "What I think is that a lot of well meaning people do hatefull [sic] things becuase [sic] they do not think about the consequences of their actions." But then at the bottom of the post I'm replying to, you seem to claim that these "well-meaning people" are in fact bigots. Well, which is it? If you're accusing them of being bigots, then I'd at least understand your indignation. However, I've been saying all along that your assumption that their motives are racist or sexist is based on your assumption that no one would find these jokes amusing unless he is a bigot. I've called this assumption into question and you've never supported it.In the above post, you say that systematic propaganda can and does create the environment of dehumanisation that brought about both the Nazi genocide and Abu Ghraib. But are you actually calling bad jokes "systematic propaganda"? By the same logic, couldn't I say that the lyrics to Visigoth marching songs were what created an environment that led to conditions that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire? I don't expect scientific thinking from a guy who calls people who disagree with him fuckwit and scum, but even this is stretching it. If there is some sort of cause-and-effect relationship between bad jokes and genocide, shouldn't genocide be happening everywhere bad jokes are told?I can't tell whether you meant to compare me to Joseph Goebbels here or whether you were trying to say that I'd defend everything he said as if he were "just kidding." Either way it seems like a desperate maneuver. Are you saying that my resentment of censorship from the likes of you is equal to genocide? I'm losing track of the amount of things that make me genocidal, you'll have to excuse me.I don't know where you're from, and I'm not sure where you learned what little you know about sociology. But I see dreary, humorless busybodies all the time, and I hear the same nonsense coming from them.regards,
Esteban Hambre

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I can't tell whether you meant to compare me to Joseph Goebbels here or whether you were trying to say that I'd defend everything he said as if he were "just kidding." Either way it seems like a desperate maneuver. Are you saying that my resentment of censorship from the likes of you is equal to genocide? I'm losing track of the amount of things that make me genocidal, you'll have to excuse me.

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I think I can clear this up. According to contracycle, anything you (or anyone else on this forum excluding contracyle himself) says that is humorous or intentionally insulting makes you a genocidal maniac and nazi sympathizer. Contracycle rises above the fray by making jokes and/or insulting comparisons to nazi's and the victims of their crimes but according to him it is ok since he was just using it to "insult an individual".In other words, in contracycle's mind, everything he says is right and moral and great, and anything anyone else says is going to directly lead to genocide. I wonder what posters he has hanging on the wall in the bomb shelter he must have lived in the last 33 years. My guess is naked pictures of Joe McCarthy...

Mammuthus,Has anyone seen contracycle & Syamsu in the same room?MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 08-05-2004 05:50 AM

Typical Darwinian bias...you compare contracycle to Syamsu when the standard method in all textbooks I have never read is to look at the stupidity of each individuals arguments. Thus Syamsu and contracycle each have baseless and senseless arguements without any comparison..not one is dumber than the other as you and your Darwinian gestapo would have us believe...it is the relative rate of dumbness and not who is dumber than the other...now everyone should just go away.Regards
Mam "dumbeth" muthus

Contracycle, I'm curious. Are you one of those really uptight white people, (Like my sister). Or are you a black guy that thinks everyone is out to get them, (Like my best friend's brother), Or something in-between?I'm white BTW and about as non-racist as they come, but I have never seen a problem with telling ethnic jokes when everyone knows their meant to be funny and not to offend or "dehumanize" anyone.

my suspicion? contra is a really uptight white person who is uptight about racist jokes for the same reason conservatives are uptight about gays... statistically (based on a study that i looked at but don't know where to find) the people who are most virulent against gays are more turned on by gay porn than the average person.think about it.

lol

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my suspicion? contra is a really uptight white person who is uptight about racist jokes for the same reason conservatives are uptight about gays... statistically (based on a study that i looked at but don't know where to find) the people who are most virulent against gays are more turned on by gay porn than the average person.

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Umm, I grew up in south africa, these jokes were and are still used as precursors of violence, and I certainly regard it as a life and death issue.