Unchained Melody begins to play
[/extends hand to Vinyl Turnip]
I agree. It’s immaterial whether it’s a funny joke. What you’re missing is that it’s only an asshole move if you consider some areas off-limits for humor, and you clearly do. People like Lenny Bruce would not flourish in today’s acrid atmosphere. And that’s not funny at all.
It’s hard to joke about an existential threat to the American way of life.
But considering what we’re talking about, this is all about feelings anyway. I would assume that someone who makes such a joke is either totally clueless about how some people perceive jokes about black skin, or doesn’t care, or thinks I’m totally okay with it (if we’re the only ones present). All three of these would make me uncomfortable to some degree, and might make me reevaluate our friendship.
So just 'cause it might be hard to put one’s finger on why exactly a joke (or other statement or whatever) is offensive, doesn’t mean it might not be offensive. And in this case, I think you with the face actually did put his finger on it – it’s conflating black people’s skin with the color black. Thinking about it further, it’s also conflating failure with the color of black people’s skin – this component fails and needs to be replaced when it’s the same color as the President.
Perhaps it’s similar to using “gay” as a negative descriptor: “Why’d you take me to that movie – it was so gay!”
Areas are not off-limits for humor–note that I joked about lynching above. Hinging your humor on a tired racist stereotype, where the only source of humor is to say, “hur hur, black people really do have big lips, don’t they?” is what’s not cool.
It depends on where you tell it. In a bar, where taste and societal respect matter less, it’s funny. Here, at the left-leaning SDMB, it’s not funny. If you were to substitute Donald Trump for Obama and refer to the blackness that is the inside of his brain, it might draw some chuckles.
There’s different degrees of racism, and calling someone or something racist tends to paint with a broad brush. Is it lynchings and burning crosses racist, ethnic joke racist, or somewhere in between? Again, it depends on the audience. I wouldn’t tell the joke here at work, or in front of my hippie friends, but would probably get a laugh out of my redneck friends.
But it was clear to me that wasn’t “ha ha, black people have big lips”. It was “ha ha, this is what a racist would say to pretend they weren’t being racist”. Just like he explained it to be. So no, you didn’t get the joke istm. I mean if you can point to a bunch of racist things he’s said in the past I might change my mind, but as a stand alone that’s seems the obvious interpretation.
I don’t buy it. “Ha ha! I’m making a joke about racist stereotypes, but since I’m claiming it’s what a racist would say, I’m in the clear!” Nope.
Don’t buy it all you like but you seem obviously wrong.
Okay.
No worries. Humour is hard.
For you, maybe, but that’s cool, nobody’s perfect :).
Seriously, your thinking of it just isn’t a joke. It really doesn’t make any sense and you only interpreted it that way because you’re over-sensitive. It’s not “liberals have no sense of humour”, you specifically knee jerked at the sight of a racist stereotype.
ISTM that you can distinguish between two types of jokes that fit this description.
In one case, the joke is a joke about the stereotypes, indistinguishable from a joke that racists themselves might make about those same stereotypes, and with a CYA of “this is what a racist might say …” I agree with you here.
But sometimes the joke is not a play on the stereotype, but essence of the joke is itself about the way a racist might try to cover his racism by using other markers which are not explicitly racial, but failing at it due to the markers themselves being stereotypes.
ISTM that you’re assuming it’s the first and CarnalK is assuming it’s the second.
Puns are a play on words. Likening Obama’s skin color to the ends of a burned out light bulb–just to make some kind of crack about when to change them out–is called an obvious stretch. The kind of stretch that only someone fixated on skin color would think to make, because Obama’s skin is not particularly dark.
Notice I never said that this joke is racist. Just that it sounds like something a racist would say. And it seems like I’m right, judging by your parenthetical about the guy.
It probably sounded “off-the-bat” offensive to you for the reasons I’ve explained. If you’ve known the guy to say racist things in the past, then this joke echoes a larger pattern of anti-black bias and race fixation. Analyzing the joke to find the objective evidence for racist intent is a fruitless pursuit. These things large boil down to subject interpretation.
But it’s possible that this is true because today’s PC hypersensitivy leaves racists as being a high percentage of the people who are unconcerned by benign-but-racial comments.
I suspect it’s for the reasons I stated. Most people just stay away from anything racial these days, and a high percentage of the ones who don’t are racists.
He’s certainly not fixated on race, and the topic has rarely come up over the course of the years I’ve known him. However, during the 2008 election he expressed considerable surprise when I told him I would have no problem voting for a black guy for Prez. So he’s a racist. But even a racist says things that are not racist too.
But I told you Lumpy’s quip didn’t strike me as racially offensive, contrary to many of the opinions expressed in this thread. That should tell you how I’m calibrated. My tolerance for racial jokes is actually pretty high. And yet the joke you relayed pings my racist meter pretty sharply.
Dismiss that as “PC hypersensitivity” if you want, but its interesting you would do that even though the joke struck you as offensive at first blush too. If you have to do this much work to rationalize something, it’s a sign that the problem isn’t imaginary.
This would seem, in my mind, to strengthen the likelihood that linking “black skin color” to “failure and in need of replacement” was on purpose on his part.
A joke that turns on race or ethnicity but is not malicious is not a racist joke in any meaningful way. Richard Pryor imitating white speech patterns totally caught me by surprise, laugh? thought I’d surely die. That’s racist, but there is no malice, no evil, therefore, it is not racist.
Its not the lyrics, its the music.
Well, first off, if it sounds racist at first blush, it is, no matter what happens later. The only exception are jokes that are anti-racist, which often use apparent racism as a means of misdirection. Jokes are all about that first impression. You don’t get a second chance.
And you have been given good reasons. You’re just dismissing them. You’re even dismissing the reasons from the actual black person who kinda has a better understanding of what is and isn’t offensive to black people. the person who actually experience racism enough to know the warning signs. This is why the target of a joke is who gets to decide if it’s offensive.
The joke is about race, when race is not even tangentially related to the subject at hand. And it involves connecting being black with something negative. It argues that Obama and a black bulb are the same color–not a play on words. And it lacks any anti-racist message that might otherwise redeem it.
As for your other question: in this case, the racism of the speaker is immaterial. The joke is unambiguously racist on its own. But if it were more ambiguous, it could matter. It’s far more likely that something that seems racist and is said by a racist is in fact racist. Ducks and quacks and all that.
I mean, if what Lumpy said came from someone who I knew was racist, I would not be giving him the benefit of the doubt.