My kids are South Korean. They’ve got their gang of pals over. Two Hispanic kids, a Phillipino kid and two white kids. All friends.
They cut eachother down over dinnertime about what race they are, etc. All laughing and having great fun, but I sat there struggling. I felt old. Maybe it’s a lot healthier to be more in-your-face about the fact of different races and backgrounds, and it was clear that not a single kid felt put off or left out. ( From what I could tell… from what I could tell. Who knows? )
I don’t know what to make of it. If you are a teenage/college age Doper, tell me- do you joke about your friends’ race with them, and they with you? ( Assuming there’s a difference in race ). Is this something I missed as a kid but was just as prevalent in the 1960’s? I think my parents would have beaten me with a belt if I joked about a kid’s racial background while playing with him.
:dubious:
Cartooniverse
p.s. these are 13 and 14 year olds. Regardless of race, they are slowly and methodically eating everything that does not have a pulse. My kids play with Locusts. Nice.
I’m 23 and if I feel comfortable enough with the friend, I will joke with them about their race, age, gender, sexual proclivities, geographic background, or pretty much everything else and take the same in return.
When I was nine I beat up a neighbour kid for using the N-word after I told him not to. I knew it referred to Black people, and I knew it was a ‘bad word’, but I didn’t really understand the racism behind it. (I still don’t, having lived in another country when I was little and not being taught that races are ‘supposed to be different’.) I said, ‘If you say that word again, I’ll beat you up!’ He used it again, so I did.
Yes. Regularly, in college. Nationality mostly, because there wasn’t much racial diversity at my school. I’m the stupid Polish girl, Mr. Frail’s the drunken Irishman, etc. I think it help us feel like we’re distancing ourselves from racist/nationalist attitudes by being able to laugh about it and bring that sort of thing into the open. Political correctness–been there, done that, isn’t much of a comfort to anyone, so we make fun of it.
Well… yes. To a random eavesdropper, the things we tell each other would sound quite horrid. But we know that we don’t mean anything by it, and we both have an understanding that it’s all in good fun.
For example:
Me: Man, “keke”? You’re such a gook.
Christina: Shouldn’t you be eating watermelons?
Me: Only after you’re done harvesting the rice.
(Christina’s Korean and I am black.)
And:
Me: :raises fist: White Power.
Joe: :raises fist: White Power.
Me: See you at the rally.
Joe: I’ll wear my hood. Say, whaddya call a black priest?
Together: Hoooly shit.
(Joe’s white.)
If anything, the ability to joke about race relations show that we REALLY don’t care about anything stupid like skin color or ethnicity, and that we are making fun of those who do. Though in your case, it could be good old-fashioned ribbing.
I did this in high school with a samoan friend. She was extremely funny and we’d laugh at a joke and she’d say “you only laugh at me 'cause I’m brown”. It became a thing with us.
About two years ago I worked with a black girl and we joked about race all the time. I was the shelter manager, and sometimes when I asked her to do something she’d say “yes massa” - or - “I can’t do that, only white folks with red hair are allowed to do that.” I really enjoyed working with her because she had such a great sense of humor!
The only times I made a race-based joke was with a friend whose mother was German and his father was Mexican. I told him he could take over the world, but he was too lazy to do it. He laughed.
His girlfriend was Korean. She once gave me a kiss on the cheek. I said, “That’s it? I thought you were supposed to love me long time!”
She laughed and slapped me on the arm.
When I was a teenager, though (mid-late 70s), my friends and I wouldn’t have dared to joke around like that.
The majority of my school is Korean and Chinese. The rest of the students are a mix of Arabic, Caucasian, black, Indian, etc., etc. Interestingly, we don’t have many Hispanic students. I’m Korean, but most of my friends are Chinese and Korean just because of the fact that there are so many more Chinese and Korean kids than others. But, I am friends with most of the Caucasian and non-Asian kids in my class. And we do make jokes about our races. My Arab friend always talks about how if she didn’t take gym class, she’d probably be obese because she jokes that all Arab people care about is food. My Korean friends and I joke about how our mothers are the Korean versions of Bree from “Desperate Housewives” with OCD. And we do this when we’re all together sometimes, so it’s not just between a specific group of friends, but all of us. We dp it because we don’t care and it’s funny.
Example:
My friend, Angel, is Sri Lankan and she has a glass eye (a long story).
Me: Angel, are you done with my notes?
Angel: Stop it! I’m not a big nerd like you!
Me: You stop…it’s because I’m Korean, isn’t it?
Angel: Whaaaat? You’re just harrassing me because I’m brown and have one eye!
(On preview, Angel’s kind of like Filmgeek’s Samoan friend.)
Good attitude. Come to think of it, my best fiend and I used to joke with each other, though it was ancestry-based instrad of race-based. He’d joke about the wee bit of Irish ancestry and my English ancestry, and I’d joke with him about his Polish ancestry. He’d also joke about my destroyed knees. Remember the video game Berzerker? He’d make the character gimp across the screen and say, ‘Look! I’m Johnny!’ You can do that with friends.
I once worked with a girl for two years before I realised she was Asian. I just thought she was really cute! :o
We were talking once and she made a comment about ‘not being White’. She didn’t believe me that I hadn’t noticed.
A friend of mine who lives in New York worked on a film about a White rapper who used the N-word to show how hip he was in the rap scene. The rapper saw it as joking with his friends, but everyone else dumped on him.
I’m 21 and all through high school and college me and my friends always openly made wise cracks about each other’s races and religions. We know each other and our senses of humor well so we understand that basically anything goes as far as jokes. Still, I’m reserved with that kind of thing when dealing with new people because you never know where people’s buttons lie.
That said, me and my friends are intolerant when it comes to racial slurs like “Ahhfricunnnn-Uhhhmerricunn.”
Yeah, sorry for that.
I had a black roommate in high school and we used to delight in hurling racial epithets at each other. It was just part of the normal insult-play that friends do.
It was especially funny in public. He was a huge musclebound jock, and occasionally, if I was with someone who didn’t know we were roommates, I would mutter some racist remark under my breath as he walked by, just loud enough for him to hear. Then he’d pretend to get all pissed off as if he was about to kick my ass, and scare the piss out of the other guy. Then we’d all have a big laugh about it.
Two of my closest friends and my boyfriend are all named Charles. To differentiate them, we call them Charles, Charlie, and Chuck. Guess which one of them is Vietnamese? Even with my fellow pigment-impaired friends, we mess around. My friend Sal calls me a bog-hopping mackrel snatcher, I make a show of keeping my wallet where I can see it, because (as I tell him) “You just can’t trust the eye-ties.” When I came out to my friends, they were all super supportive of it for the first day, and started calling me “fag” the second. It’s all cool. We’re friends, we know there’s nothing bigoted behind it all.
Oh yeah. I’ve seen that before. If each party is on a totally laid back comfort level with each other, it’s not a problem to joke about that. Case in point - my brother and one of his best friends, Roberto, whose family is from Mexico:
(Roberto shows up at door)
Bro: Hey, you friggin’ greasy spick.
Roberto: Hey, you half-breed paint huffer.
I think it’s a guy thing, though. I’ve never greeted any of my friends like that and never heard any other girls do it, either.
My town picks a city-wide book to read each year (then they schedule discussions and events around it; a lot of book clubs jump on the bandwagon).
A couple of years ago it was “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria.” It was a pretty interesting look at kids and race and their attitudes and race relations throughout childhood. Any parents (or other people) intrigued by the topic, I’d recommend it.
I guess what threw me was that it was all the kids chipping in. ( Obviously I am in the minority here, and that pleases me. Sure, pick on the fat old white guy !!! )
Shortly after the kids’ annual summertime sojourn to Korean Culture Camp, the Fem-Bot would be told No about something and come at me with, " it’s cause I’m Korean, isn’t it? Huh? Huh? I bet it is. Korean-hater ! ". I admit this amused me, but I’m her father.
Perhaps it is indeed a true show of comfort and mutual appreciation that they are able to go around with that level of scathing yet humorous language. I’m not upset by this, I was just caught by surprise tonight.
Frankly, the one thing I give a damn about is that each boy on his way to the car that someone’s Mom drove over, said to me, " Thanks so much for having me". That stuff counts in my book. The lot of 'em can come over and strip-mine my kitchen any time.
I’m glad to read what you folks are posting- it makes me more comfortable with what I heard tonight and makes me feel as though my children have chosen their friends fairly well.
Among my classmates at engineering school, there’s a running joke of the “non-whites” (Arabs, Hispanics, etc) giving each other a greeting that includes pressing fists together and saying “White Power”. It doesn’t seem to bother anybody, and we mix without issue in our work and studies. It’s more to mock the idea of racism itself than to mock anyone of a particular race. Also made fun of: the fat guy, the mexican guy, the french guys, the gay guy, the women, the rural northerners, and the white guys.
It doesn’t seem to phase anybody in that peer group, though outsiders sometimes have a hard time adjusting to the number of (well-intended, but straight-faced) insults flying around.
I would never feel comfortable making a joke about a friend’s racial or ethnic background. It’s a generational thing. My kids are grown now, but when they were still at home they frequently jawed with their black friends in a manner that would have been unthinkable for me.
My son once pulled up beside the barn at our farm with a black kid in the car and yelled: “Hey Dad, get the gun! I finally got one out here!” Then they both broke out laughing. I don’t think that kid’s father would have enjoyed the “joke” any more than I did. But they both enjoyed it, and that’s what counts.
I can’t help but believe that things ARE getting better, and the freedom to express such humor is one of the things I base that belief on.
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