What makes a joke racist?

[Miller]

@TriPolar

Do you have trouble seeing the word “shit” in the OP?

Yes, as a verb. “Shit” used as a noun refers to feces. “Shit” used as a verb refers to the process of passing something through your rectum. When the sentence you’re looking at says, “shit out a diamond,” Hart is not being compared to feces, he’s being compared to a diamond.

[jz78817]

@DinoR

I wouldn’t say either of those necessarily makes a joke racist. Those can and are both used as tools to parody racism as well. Blazing Saddles is a great an example of a movie that, by your criteria, is chock full of racist jokes. I wouldn’t call it racist.

Is Dave Chappelle racist when he powders his face, dons a blond wig, and speaks in a monotonous, somewhat dull manner?

[Sterling_Archer]

Racist. “Your skin is so black… you’re like coal” That alone makes it racist, but then adding a shit metaphor on top isn’t helping. Both are dehumanizing.

The trickier fine line in racist jokes is when there are jokes mocking the racist attitudes and stereotypes, rather than agreeing with them. Basically everything on Dave Chapelle’s show was a parody of racism. He was troubled by the fact that less enlightened types would take his jokes at face value, agree with what he was parodying, and laugh at the very racism he was lampooning. So he quit.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

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.

Yeah. Back when the thread first appeared, I was tempted to reply, comparing such jokes to wearing blackface, but I thought better of it.

There’s not necessarily anything inherently racist about a white person wearing blackface, but because of the historical context and baggage, it’s a minefield that it’s best to steer clear of. Likewise some jokes involving race, like the OP’s, when told by white people about black people.

[Isamu]

If the fulcrum of the joke is about race, racial stereotypes or racial monikers, then it’s almost certainly racist. That’s a decent rule of thumb for spoken jokes, but for comedy sketches it can be difficult to find the fulcrum, and people may disagree on what the fulcrum is, or whether there is just one fulcrum.

[Saintly_Loser]

In hi/her first post, and in post 12, the OP appears to imitate black English.

Although the OP is apparently not white, I didn’t understand him/her to be black, either, and I can’t think of a single case where I’ve heard someone imitate black speech without coming across as racist.

I’m kinda surprised this hasn’t come up earlier in the thread.

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