On the fourteenth of March, 2008, as a white person I was subject to the following discourse from my white, 24 year old sister and her two white peer-aged friends, in a car coming home from our mother’s funeral.
“How do you starve a nigger?”
“Put his food stamps under his work boots.”
“How do you keep a nigger out of the back yard?”
“Hang one in the front.”
“What do you call something pink and purple that sits on the porch?”
“My nigger, and I’ll paint him any color I want.”
“What’s the difference between a pie and a Jew?”
“A pie doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.”
“How do you fit six million Jews in one car?”
“Put them in the ashtray.”
I am pitting myself. All I said was “Yeah, I’ve heard some too. But they’re awful, I wouldn’t repeat them.”
I’m sorry about your mother, Ensign Edison. Worry about the jokes another day. Rent a movie or see some friends or talk to your sister - about something else.
Thanks. We did talk about many other things, which is part of what made it so gut-wrenching when the nigger and Holocaust jokes started. People you think are decent, people you love, can whip that shit out just as fast as people you know are evil. That’s what’s so wretched about it, in the end. I know some people will come along to defend it soon, and maybe that’s why I’m posting it here. I couldn’t fight with them about it but I have to fight with somebody. That’s my damage, but whatever. At least my brother would have understood.
A litany of nigger jokes would be inappropriate on any occassion, but right after a mother’s funeral? Perhaps your sister was going through temporary insanity induced by grief?
Maybe it’s just me. I wouldn’t be as concerned about some stupid jokes as I would how they treat actual people. When you are young and/or immature you can get an exciting feeling of being naughty by telling racist jokes to your friends. In a closed car where you are in no danger of getting your ass kicked. If your sister treats people fairly in real life just chalk it up to immaturity and move on. Seems like you have other things to worry about now.
Q: What’s the difference between a pizza and a black man?
A: A pizza can feed a family of four.
But seriously, it really depends on the sorta people who are telling these jokes and the general atmosphere. You start to get sad when you think the guy might be a little too serious. It can be just kind hearted fun. It’s best, of course, when there is a mixed group and everyone cracks on the other person’s race in good fun. This might be more of a male thing though, like how they’ll make fun of other guys and try to one up each other.
Cheer up. Young people today are very non-bigoted, whether we’re talking about race, gender, or sexual orientation.
That’s why I pit myself. In saying “I have heard them but don’t repeat them” I was doing my best to establish where I stood without being confrontational. We had three hours in a car together to go, and I just…fucking wussed out.
Some of it was definitely the sort of blowing off stress that happens after a hard time – our grandfather is also in the hospital and not doing well right now, so we went from the services to his bedside, and that kind of thing. But I don’t find it acceptable no matter what, and anyway more of it was coming from the other two who had no recent loss.
There’s no excuse. I know they’re decent people with no real hate in their hearts; that’s what makes it so hard. Decent people have this shit in their heads in a real way, and it comes out and gets all over the place when you scratch the surface just so.
[QUOTE=marshmallow
But seriously, it really depends on the sorta people who are telling these jokes and the general atmosphere. You start to get sad when you think the guy might be a little too serious. It can be just kind hearted fun.[/QUOTE]
HANG ONE IN THE FUCKING FRONT?! Are you shitting me with this kind hearted fun of yours?
You know your sister and we don’t. But one kind of humor is saying the most horrible things you can when you don’t mean them in the slightest, and from here, that sounds like it could’ve been what you heard. I think you’re upset and not in a position to judge the intentions behind something like this - which is why if I was ever going to tell a joke like that, which I wouldn’t, I sure wouldn’t do it on the way back from a funeral - but that could just as easily have been what was going on. And looking back at your OP, I think your response was sufficient. You said the jokes were awful and refused to get into it. What do you think you should’ve done? Yelled at your sister when she’s already dealing with her mother’s death, just like you are?
**Loach ** and marshmellow: I don’t tell inappropriate jokes based on people’s race, gender, religion, etc. because…well, they’re inappropriate. Fucking inappropriate. Especially as a my-mother-just-died-and-I-need-to-take-my-mind-off-of-it stress reliever. Then again, maybe it’s just me.
Actually, it’s not just me–lots of people, especially those who’ve been called “nigger,” or who’ve been victims of racist treatment, or who survived the Holocaust, or who had relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis would agree with me.
Ensign Edison: I don’t like confrontations (and I especially wouldn’t like having to engage in confrontation under the circumstances that you describe), so I can understand why you didn’t say anything in the moment. However, if this kind of humor runs counter to your values (and from what I’ve seen of your posts here, it does), I don’t see how you can *not * confront your sister about this.
It may be true, as you say, that your sister doesn’t harbor the kind of hatred or bigotry expressed in those jokes, but I tend to think that something is not quite…right about people who blithely engage in that kind of humor.
Whatever the case may be, I don’t think you should let this pass.
People tell dead baby jokes all the time, even here on the SDMB. There are jokes about the Irish, Germans, French, Americans, Jews, Muslims, etc… It depends how they’re told, who they’re told by and who they’re told to.
When my father tells a racist/offensive joke it makes me sad and angry, when my mother tells one it makes me laugh.
“What was the last thing that went through Ayrton Senna’s mind?” I laughed my ass of at that joke (I was 10) despite the fact that I cried when the accident happened.
As long as they don’t represent the sincere beliefs of the person saying them, and so far as nobody is being purposefully or tactlessly offensive, I don’t see any reason to throw a fit about off-color jokes.
The following clip is different in style, but it’s still off-color. Should we use Chris Rock’s Niggas vs. Black People as a sign of the racism apocalypse?
