This one is a little touchy, but I’m hoping y’all can follow me here. There is a certain type of misdirection joke that seems like it’s political or racial, but goes the other way and satirizes the audience’s preconception. I want this thread to just tell these type of jokes. I’ll give two examples for what I’m looking for. The first one has a punch line I’ll put in a spoiler and the second one stands on it’s own.
1)What do you call a black guy flying a plane?
A pilot, you racist idiot
2)There is a double standard regarding men and women’s sexuality. If a women sleeps with a bunch of guys she’s called a “slut”, but if a man does it he’s called “gay”.
*In our modern free-spoken society
There is a word that we still hold taboo
A word with a terrible history
Of being used to abuse, oppress and subdue
Just six seemingly harmless letters
Arranged in a way that will form a word
With more power than the pieces of metal
That are forged to make swords
A couple of Gs, an R and an E, an I and an N
Just six little letters all jumbled together*
There’s the one that got Sarah Silverman in trouble on Late Night with Conan O’Brian in 2001:
[…]she explained how to get out of jury duty. She said, she got the suggestion, “Why don’t you just write something really inappropriate, like ‘I hate Chinks?’” She responded that she didn’t want people to think way about her, thus she said, "So I just filled out the form, and I wrote, ‘I love Chinks.’ And who doesn’t?
There are a lot of jokes filed under racist jokes, that are actually more like black humor(wah wah) in the face of racism. Something like how far can a black driver get on 5 gallons of gas going 25mph? Not far before being pulled over and arrested on a technicality.
The owner of a Chinese restaurant went out drinking until 5am. He returned home all drunk to an angry wife. “He baby, don’t be mad. What do you say to some 69?”
To which his wife yelled "You go out drinking all night, come home sloshed
and you expect me to cook up some kung pao chicken?
Conan O’Brien added another layer of bait-and-switch prejudice to the “69” joke some years ago, via “Clutch Cargo” versions of Dubya and Jiang Zemin. Paraphrased from memory:
[SPOILER]DUBYA: Hey, Jiang, listen to this one. A guy goes to a Chinese hooker and asks for 69. So she gives him kung pao chicken! Heh heh heh…
CONAN: Mr. President, come on - that’s uncalled for.
JIANG: No, no, Conan, it is very funny! Everyone knows kung pao chicken is 72! 69 is pork fried rice! Hey, you got any more “stupid hooker” jokes?[/SPOILER]
From Blazing Saddles when Mel Brooks as the Governor takes Bart aside thinking it’s Hedley and cuts himself short: “Can’t you see that man is a ni…”
Then he actually takes Hedley aside and repeats himself: “Can’t you see that man is a nit!!”
A man goes to the drugstore to buy condoms. He notices that they come in 6-packs, 8-packs, and 12-packs.
The clerk explains:
The 6-pack is for hispanics: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. (Sunday is a day of rest.)
The 8-pack is for blacks: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and twice a day on Sunday.
The 12-pack is for whites: January, February, March, . . .
A school bus driver became sick of the constant fighting between the white kids and the black kids every day. So he pulled over to the side of the road and made them all get out.
“Look,” he told them, “All these arguments are stupid. Why don’t you guys all just imagine you are one color? From now on I want you all to consider yourselves green. Not white, not black just green. Got it.”
The kids smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
“Right, now get back on the bus. I want the dark green kids at the back and the light green kids at the front.”
It does if you assume that “white” people can’t be the butt of jokes in a stinging or hurtful way, because they are still on some level the assumed, dominant, neutral, privileged group. So, a joke making fun of a perceived shortcoming of “white” people is as innocuous as one which seems like it will make fun of a “minority,” but actually doesn’t.
So, you’re right, not the same, but in some sense equivalent. (I’m not arguing either way here about whether “white” people can or can’t be hurt by jokes about them – that’s a topic for a more serious thread.)
I agree with alexandra, this doesn’t qualify. Maybe I’m not getting something, but it just looks like an ordinary racist joke to me. Though, yes, it’s refreshing to see whites included among the victims, I guess.