# Should my uncle be banned from family events **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2008, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832 "2008-11-08T18:14:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/61 "2008-11-10T03:51:16Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Dude, she’s _ninety frickin’ years old._ > > A propensity for saying offensive, inappropriate, and/or bigoted things is a very common symptom of advanced age. Yeah, when very old people start to say inappropriate things I think it’s more reason to be concerned about senility than reason to take offense. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/62 "2008-11-10T04:16:00Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > Yeah, when very old people start to say inappropriate things I think it’s more reason to be concerned about senility than reason to take offense. Sometimes. But old people can be assholes, too. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/63 "2008-11-10T04:52:45Z")
You have no business deciding “for the family” if he is banned, and IMO no business organizing a family-wide ban. You can refuse to invite him to events in your home, and you can refuse to attend parties elsewhere if you expect him to be there. And if someone asks why, say so. Let them decide what, if anything to do. That is all. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/64 "2008-11-10T05:09:33Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Jokes about the assassination of a President, particularly jokes that imply it should happen, particularly with overtones of aggrieved racists longing to oppress, are neither mild nor funny. It’s dumbass, but more than that, it’s provocative. > > People tell “jokes” like that mainly to put bystanders to the choice of objecting, and being labeled as humorless, or remaining silent, and being co-opted into complicity. I see it as a deliberate tactic. > > In this choice, I reject silence. So if he took a knife and starting stabbing the table yelling out politician’s names with the word “dead” you would ban him from the table? Not very presidential of you. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/65 "2008-11-10T12:40:59Z")
I think you should have taken your uncle aside and told him of your feelings towards racist jokes. Then you should have told him that if you hear him tell another one, you would beat the snot out of him. That is, if you really and truly have such a strong opinion that racist jokes are all that offensive to you. Instead, you turn to a bunch of strangers to ask their opinions. So, I’m expressing mine. You either have the power of your convictions or you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/66 "2008-11-10T13:40:07Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > I think it _is_ a racist joke. > > Consider the history of black men being lynched when they got too “uppity.” Lynchings were very effective in keeping blacks “in their place.” They were necessary to maintain white supremacy. > > Barack Obama has committed the ultimate act of uppityness. Therefore, his death is necessary to maintain the “proper” social order. The uncle was saying that his assassination is inevitable _because_ his is black. > > It might not be the most egregiously racist joke ever, but the racial allusion was immediately obvious to me. No, I disagree. This interpretation means that any joke that alludes to a politically-motivated assassination is racist if applied to Obama. Now, if the question was “What do Martin Luther King and Obama have in common…” then the racial analogy is obvious. But white-bread Kennedy as the predicate? No. (Obviously, other information, like learning that joke was told in the middle of a rant against uppity negros, would change my view.) ---
**Author:** ![bluecanary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bluecanary/32/3614_2.png) [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/67 "2008-11-10T14:02:35Z")
Come on, this has to be a wind-up thread. ---
**Author:** ![Karyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/fbc32d/32.png) [@Karyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karyn)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/68 "2008-11-10T14:30:52Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > Yeah, when very old people start to say inappropriate things I think it’s more reason to be concerned about senility than reason to take offense. I’m going through something similar now with my mother. When we were growing up we literally had our mouths washed out with soap if we said anything racist or repeated a joke that we didn’t really understand. Now that she’s in her 80s and senility is creeping in she’s become frightened of and angry at anyone different and it comes out in terribly racist remarks. No minority is excluded - she even made a racist comment about Native Americans right in front of my partner, who is Lakota. I try to cut her some slack because of her age but she knows enough not to say those things in front of her grandkids or in public so she can control it when she wants to. She lives on the east coast so I don’t see her often and I’m torn between confronting her about it and keeping the peace because I’m not sure how much of her behavior comes from senility and how much is just pure racism that she’s hidden until now. So far I’ve gone with ignoring it because she isn’t going to be around much longer and I don’t want to ruin our already strained relationship. I agree that no one has the right to tell the rest of the family to cut him off. You only get to control what you do. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832/69 "2008-11-10T14:45:04Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I was born in 1983 and I was in my teens before I even knew who the hell President Kennedy was, much less that he was assassinated Seriously? Wow. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-my-uncle-be-banned-from-family-events/471832.md?page=3)