I overheard a joke while subbing a high school class yesterday-
“What do you do when you meet a black guy with half a face?
Reload and try again!”
The problem’s not that the joke isn’t funny by any means. The weird part is- the kid telling the joke was black… seriously.
Any ideas? This is in rural Vermont, and he’s one of a handful of minorities in the school. Was he trying to fit in with the rednecks or something?
It was reported, just in case.
Oh thank god. The world is safe.
I’m from West Virginia, and I freely offer the most disgusting West Virginia jokes that reinforce the stereotypes of ignorance, toothlessness, and incest. By telling the jokes, I acknowledge that I’m aware of the stereotypes – but I bristle when non-West Virginians tell them. Perhaps what you experienced was something along these lines.
FWIW, the joke you cited is an example of a “plug in your favorite ethnic/racial/whatever target” joke. There are jokes that are based on racism against blacks, but this isn’t one of them.
Just in case of what?
You reported it? Seriously? To whom? What did you report? Is there a register of people who tell bad jokes in poor taste at your school?
Maybe the kids were having a “Most Offensive Joke” contest. Maybe it was a case of “You won’t believe the shit Rush Limbaugh just said!” Maybe he was just trying to get a reaction. Maybe you could have just asked him.
If he ends up having to “talk” to anyone at the school because of this, the only things he’ll learn are: 1) Honkies got no sense of humor, 2) Watch what you say around teachers, and 3) Don’t trust authorities - they’ll take anything you say that they don’t understand and use it against you. Valuable lessons all, I suppose, but not what I imagine you were hoping to accomplish. Umm…what were you trying to accomplish again?
This is how life works. You are allowed to make off-color jokes as long as you are as much or more a part of the group that you are mocking than your audience. That’s why I, an Oregonian, can mock Birkenstocks, hiking, and dirty hippies freely, but I bristle when my Midwestern relatives do it.
Seriously, this is the entire principle behind Jewish humor- Gentiles can laugh at it as long as it’s a Jew making the joke.
Wow, that joke took me about two minutes to get. I thought, it was a computer/game joke about poorly loading model data for characters, where some games have been known to have bugs where half the the head model will be missing and the texture will get corrupted or not load, hence leading to a character that is solid black missing half his face.
Then it hit me… so, yeah. Anyway, FWIW, I agree with the other posters. It’s not exactly uncommon for people (especially at that age) to tell jokes like that, and about your own race is even more likely. If I had a nickel for every Jewish Mother gag I’ve heard from Jews…
Really? That was the first thing you thought of? I’m not making fun of you, I’m just kind of amazed that your mind is such that this is what crosses it first for a joke worded like that! It’s kind of cool to see the results of such a different train of thought!
I think the joke is in poor taste and not very funny, but I think at most the kid deserved to be told by you, the teacher, that the joke was in poor taste and not very funny and to please refrain from telling such jokes while at school, since some people might get offended.
Dude. You need to get off the computer for a bit.
Sounds like he was re-telling a stupid joke or telling a joke so incredibly and ludicrously racist that his non-racist friends would have a laugh that anyone would find it funny. Or trying to fit in. Hopefully not.
I blame the fact that I’ve been trying to get KOTOR to work on Windows 7 recently, it has some truly… unique bugs. Add on top of that 4 hours of sleep a night due to Comp Sci project overload and you’ve got yourself a recipe for everything rerouting to the center of the brain. I’d probably have gotten it in person or on a better day.
Edit: Or I could pretend I’m better than all of you for not thinking about shooting black people in the face at the drop of a hat, but I take the high road. 
I was glad to see a re-run of the original Bad News Bears came on while my friends and I were channel surfing.
Specifically the scene when Tanner says “Great. First spics and niggers, now a girl!”
Everybody laughed. Total count in the room: 2 hispanics, 3 blacks*, and 2 women.
C’mon, everybody. Not everything said is racist. I mean, besides the obvious hurtful stuff. Sometimes it’s okay to say this stuff, in the comedy vein.** (Michael Richards not included)
** I guess I should add the obligatory non-legal statement that this should be done with enlightened people, not gun-toting racists. Or in public. Or blah blah blah…
I laughed. Either I’m a horrible person, or you just haven’t figured out yet that different people are amused by different things. (Or both–it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.)
If they’re anything like some of the occasional visual bugs I had show up when playing it on a computer with XP, I can imagine.
Holy shit! I didn’t get it at all until I read this!
That is seriously fucked up…
And I can appreciate bad humor in most forms…
Why did I report it? I don’t know, somebody talking about guns and shooting at a public high school. With minorities involved.
Just covering my ass. I was summoned to court a few years ago in a case where a girls ex boyfriend made fun of her in a class that I was subbing.
This shit sucks, but today in a public school the adults have to report and note everything that could be construed as not good or normal. Everything from taunts to bruises to bad jokes.
You want a way out there example? Last year a kid got suspended for having a hammer in his backpack during a lunchtime yelling match. So yeah, if I know that a kid has a hammer for no reason, I have to report it.
I guess it’s possible that anything could come back to bite you, but that doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to report every little thing that could possibly do so. Do you think there’s a good enough chance that this kid will shoot someone and it will come to the attention of others that you once overheard him (how would anyone know what you overheard) tell an off-colored joke and you didn’t report it?
You think reporting a kid for bringing a hammer to school is more out there than reporting a kid for telling the above joke? Really?
But supposedly, you are an intelligent adult who knows the difference between a threat and a bad joke.
Supposedly.
So here’s what landed me in court as a witness-
Ex boyfriend walks up to ex girlfriend and says “Oh you’re so pretty, you’re so popular, everybody loves you, nobody likes me, I’m such a loser”. The entire class was laughing because it was totally ridiculous.
I didn’t report it. Two months later I get a court summons as a witness in a domestic abuse case. And a lecture from administration about reporting “these types of things”.
It’s really just easier to fill out a form and let the higher ups decide what’s a threat and what’s a bad joke. Like I said, cover my ass, and hopefully not have to go to court again over something stupid that we all laughed about.
Yeah but I notice you have no black, hispanic women friends racist.
Suppose later on, another teacher heard a different kid telling a joke like this, and he got in big trouble for it. Documentation that stuff like this gets said sometimes, with innocent intentions, might help the kid’s case, maybe remind people to keep their heads. So I don’t think pabstist was so wrong for saying something about this non-incident.
If you continue to sub for high school kids, I see a lot of form-filling in your future. This is bound to be bad for your reputation with the kids and the higher ups.