First…let’s keep it civil. It’s a simple question.
IMHO one of three conditions must be met.
The one telling the joke is indicating that he’s ethnically superior.
The joke contains an ethnic slur.
OR
The joke contains a well-known stereotype.
Now consider this joke. I’ve taken a joke i heard recently and paraphrased it but the parameters of the joke are the same.
Say I’m hanging out with Kevin Hart and The Rock, and I say: “Damn Kevin, you so black and tiny…Dwayne here could squeeze you between his butt cheeks and shit out a diamond!”
That’s not racist is it? Kevin hart IS black and tiny, and being tiny isn’t a black stereotype at all. Just mentioning someones ethnicity or skin color doesn’t automatically make a joke racist.
When my kid was born (despite being part native), he was the whitest, most alabaster kid I’ve seen without being albino. Now if he went to school and his classmates joked they were being blinded every time he stepped out into the sun…that’s not racist.
Am I wrong?
It’s racist because it calls Kevin Hart black, you know that he is brown, so you are using a racist term to separate him from other people, and then you liken Keven Hart to a piece of shit. Then you pretend that calling your son light skinned is the same as calling Kevin Hart a piece of shit. Then you try to compare a comment about the light skin of your son to calling Kevin Hart a piece of shit. This is a disgusting attempt too wave away racism as some kind of harmless humor.
I’m sorry. I feel like I’m missing something obvious here.
You (or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is literally making a joke referencing Kevin Hart’s race. How is that not a “racist joke”?
Although, I’d say that’s not really the question here. Really the question is it ok to make any joke that makes any sort of reference to race? Personally, I think a lot of it depends on the context, who is telling the joke, and their relationship to the subject. Especially, since a big part of Kevin Hart’s comedy is based off of him being a tiny black man.
Technically, he’s calling Kevin Hart a tiny piece of coal.
to me, “isms” (racism, sexism, etc.) are underpinned by contempt. simply making a joke about a person’s particular characteristic isn’t “-ist” unless your intent is to show you hold them in contempt or at least in lesser regard.
There are jokes about race, and there are jokes about racism. The exampled joke is about race; therefore it is racist. If it were a joke lampooning that racism, it would be a joke about racism, and therefore not racist.
Example:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because there was a black dude walking toward him.
That’s a joke lampooning the chicken’s racism, and is therefore not about race but about racism.
I would consider the Kevin Hart/Rock joke to be racist. The “so black” seems to be an irrelevant non sequitur, since the joke, I presume, is related to Kevin Hart’s short stature. So why is race being brought into the joke?
Also, it kind of sounds like you are saying “you’re so black and tiny that you could fit in someone’s butt cheeks”. Why would being black mean he is well-suited to being between someone’s butt cheeks?
The crux of the joke is a roundabout way of calling Kevin Hart a tiny piece of coal.* Ancillary to that is its also remarking on Dwaynes remarkable strength (“Turn it into diamond”)…with a little potty humor (“shit out a diamond”).
NOW…I had considered “is calling Kevin Hart a tiny piece of coal racist?” There are connotations to “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves” That’s a 75 year old cartoon.
And there are connotations to just plain saying “You black as coal”. Which sounds like something you’d hear in a 70’s chaingang film. I think its all a little roundabout, but I think you could argue that calling Kevin Hart a piece of coal is directly racist.
Of course again the context Msmith inquired about would also be taken into account
He’s comparing him to a piece of coal, hence the squeezing into a diamond reference. You’ve really never heard someone say that someone is so tight-assed they could squeeze coal into a diamond?
I think context is everything. As a stand-alone joke, the Hart/Rock joke sounds racist. That said, I could potentially see the joke being used in a sitcom, but the joke would come from the uncomfortable silence of the people hearing it, and the awkward situation thus created.
White supremacy has a long history of white people mocking black people for their physical features, including the darkness of their skin. It shows up in minstrelsy, it shows up in lawn jockeys, it shows up in jokes.
Asking why you can’t tell a joke about Kevin Hart’s skin color sounds a bit like asking why you can’t display lawn jockeys or wear blackface.
I personally don’t find the joke racist, necessarily (but I’m white), but I find it offends me comedically. (Just riffing on the idea behind the Ferris Bueller line and probably many before it.)
Uh, no I didn’t. You’re nitpicking words. Let’s try again, and see if you can get past nitpicking:
Asking why it’s racist to tell a joke about Kevin Hart’s skin color sounds a bit like asking why it’s racist to display lawn jockeys or wear blackface.
Edit: racism doesn’t exist as an independent property of the universe, like mineral hardness or the speed of light. It’s about the relationship between different people situated within a social/historical context. A joke told by one person can exhibit racism, whereas it wouldn’t exhibit the same racism told by another person. A white person telling a joke with the n-word is way the fuck more of a problem than the same joke told by a black person, due to that context.
If you’re not in a position where you feel comfortable telling a joke with a racist epithet, you probably aren’t in the position where you could tell a joke mocking a black person’s skin color and have it be copacetic.
He’s comparing him to a piece of coal, hence the squeezing into a diamond reference. You’ve really never heard someone say that someone is so tight-assed they could squeeze coal into a diamond?