Chapter 11: Racist Jokes

Jokes tend to be part of everyday culture. One question tends to be with racial jokes, where do we draw the line with what is and is not socially acceptable to say out loud? With taking many classes that focus on race I have found that I am really sensitive to jokes that are tossed around when it comes to race because I know the implications behind them. I feel as if they perpetuate stereotypes that have been institutionalized by our society and they are a lot harsher when you know their history. When you think about the inequality in our culture the jokes become less funny. Yet a lot of jokes are told within each race and help establish an individualized culture. Many of my friends have told me I have lost an aspect of my humor because I am a lot more careful around the topic of racial jokes. So the question continues to be where do jokes become harmful to society and how do they play into everyday racism? If the jokes are defined as racist it creates the belief that humans are divided into groups that are different in their social behavior that can be ranked as superior or inferior (405).

I thought this meme emphasized my point.

When I grew up my dad continually joked about his Asian background. He would make jokes such as “Why do Asians have slanted eyes” and he would push his eyes to become more slanted then state, “Oh no more rice!” We would always laugh about this in our family and it became a running joke. Yet he warned us that we should be really careful of who we shared that joke with because it may be less funny to someone else. He also stated that it was okay for him to joke about that because he was Asian. This became something that we could bond over as being from Asian heritage. This attitude changed when someone else used jokes that were similar but they were not within that race. For example, one of my friends would call me Chink on a regular basis, which refers to someone of Chinese background. First of all, I am not Chinese but I took this as a nickname. It was offensive to me but since she was my friend I accepted it as friendly teasing. Looking back on this I should not have let her use this phrase as a nickname, it ended up making me feel really bad about myself just because she was using a name that had so much history behind it. There are jokes that become only acceptable when they are used within a race, yet even then there is still the question of whether or not those people are marginalizing themselves through their jokes. If they are playing into the stereotypes other people have for them are jokes ultimately healthy?

Throughout school jokes are tossed around about race and you never know when to step in to say that they are not okay. Where do we individually draw the line of what form of discrimination is okay? Jokes about people’s intelligence, color, or skill levels tend to be an everyday topic. People tend to accept discrimination within jokes because they are “just jokes” and people can brush them off. They expect there to be no lasting impact of their jokes on the people they are talking with. While they are “just jokes” the minorities that are being targeted tend to walk away feeling as if they fit that stereotype or not knowing how to react. It is harder to stand up for yourself when racism is in a form of a joke and people do not want you to take it seriously.

This becomes a larger issue within the realm entertainment. Comedy is full of jokes that are focused around race and ethnicity. Comedians have full range to pull out racial and ethnic stereotypes to get their audience to laugh. Of course in history there have been comedians that are called out for taking their comedy too far. People remember “Kramer’s” Racist Tirade, where Michael Richards went on a racist rant in a stand-up act which offended many people. He apologized to the community, yet people stated that was just the beginning of the healing process. As a society what makes that rant cross the line into too much? There are plenty other comedy acts that we call “off color”, yet we accept them and even laugh at them.

As a society I think we need to take a look at where we draw the line of what is socially acceptable and how we are impacting the outlook of different communities of people through our jokes. We make excuses for our discrimination of people and expect them to keep their true feelings hidden about the situation for a few laughs. Jokes are a huge part of our society and laughing keeps us light-hearted but we need to look at our forms of institutionalized racism through these acts. We tend to lace our jokes with customs that have racist intentions whether we realize it or not (405).

Work Cited:

Newman, D.M. (2012). Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday life. 9th Ed. Pine Forge Press: Thousand Oaks, California.