rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

'Offensive' humour = death, sex, bodily functions, stuff at your own expense.

'Not actually humour but racism' humour = racism.

Also Shakey Mo OTM

frogbs, if you were nowhere near the cookie jar, why are you holding a glass of milk as you wipe cookie crumbs off your shirt?

b/c I'm trying to do the same thing the last 200 posters have been doing, saying that all racism isn't created equal!

I agree that in pretty much all forms it's bad taste and incorrect and shaking my head at the idea that apparently everyone who's ever laughed at a racial joke is a hateful moron, especially when its a (lazy) cornerstone of the modern sitcom/R-rated comedy

Honestly it's like you think we all got together this morning and made up all these rules just to trick you. WAKE UP. This is the rest of the world.

frogbs fwiw there is a difference between making a joke about a racial stereotype - like in, say, the Jerk where Steve Martin insists he is black - and making racist jokes. Stereotypes can be funny when they are ridiculed/punctured, when they are used to make fun of a specific subset of people, they are simply racist.

agreed, but there can be hints of racism in both and again, it's not equal

I'm bailing on the what is jokes discussion on the what is racist thread.

xxp Yeah, that's why I think I lost the thread of the conversation for a bit. I thought we were arguing about what racism meant. Really we were discussing what 'institutional' meant.

yeah when i say "institutional" i mean the institution of western society and white colonialism, not like organizations of white people with an official seal

*runs away again*

any thoughts on jam donaldson't hot ghetto mess/ we can do better?
http://www.hotghettomess.com/

Honestly it's like you think we all got together this morning and made up all these rules just to trick you. WAKE UP. This is the rest of the world.

again, if you guys just read my posts and didn't make fucked up assumptions this thread would literally be 1000 posts lighter

good rule of thumb, frogbs: if you wouldn't tell a joke in front of a person of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, creed, class, etc, you shouldn't say it when they're not around. the reason why you wouldn't tell the joke in front of them is not bc they wouldn't understand that it's not actually offensive. the reason why is bc you rightfully would feel shame. feel that shame in private too.

Maybe it's better to say that anyone who laughs at a hateful/racist joke is being hateful/racist and moronic at that moment. Whether they are all of those things at base will depend on how often and how guiltlessly they indulge the impulse, and whether they ever personally confront what those ideas bring about, like suffering, poverty, etc.

yeah when i say "institutional" i mean the institution of western society and white colonialism, not like organizations of white people with an official seal

so just so we're clear, the way you were using it is not the generally accepted use of the word, right?

b/c I'm trying to do the same thing the last 200 posters have been doing, saying that all racism isn't created equal!

fyi, this is not really what you've been saying.

like, glancing at the wiki, it's clearly about actual institutions + policy, not about 'western society' xp

racipedia?

good rule of thumb, frogbs: if you wouldn't tell a joke in front of a person of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, creed, class, etc, you shouldn't say it when they're not around. the reason why you wouldn't tell the joke in front of them is not bc they wouldn't understand that it's not actually offensive. the reason why is bc you rightfully would feel shame. feel that shame in private too.

I appreciate the thought but I'm not talking about "white guys telling racial jokes to each other", I'm talking about when they actually are around/friendly with each other. I mean I'm sure most of what I've said ITT runs contrary to this but I'm not stupid!!

if you guys just read my posts and didn't make fucked up assumptions this thread would literally be 1000 posts lighter

― frogs you are the dumbest asshole (frogbs), Friday, January 27, 2012 8:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Thing is, I try not to make assumptions about you. You post lots of great things about lots of music I love, so I'm trying my hardest to make excuses and find the reasonable side. But the stuff you have come out with today is racist-apologist bullshit, and people are right to call you out on it.

mordy: glancing at the wiki of what? i've always known "institution" to refer both to literal institutions and "unofficial" ones that exist without... planning, i guess. if you want to use another word, feel free, but that's how i've always used it.

the wikipedia definition of institutional racism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

Maybe it's better to say that anyone who laughs at a hateful/racist joke is being hateful/racist and moronic at that moment. Whether they are all of those things at base will depend on how often and how guiltlessly they indulge the impulse, and whether they ever personally confront what those ideas bring about, like suffering, poverty, etc.

we discussed this a bit in the Long Duk Dong thread, and correct me if I'm wrong but I think the general consensus is that A) the character was harmful/racist/in bad taste and that B) in spite of that, the character was still funny to that extent, and I'm saying that finding that funny is pretty much harmless? I mean do people actually laugh at that character because they honestly think that's what Asian people are really like?

that character is not funny

zach, what I posted upthread is from the wikipedia article.

xx-post uh no one in the thread found that stereotype funny! Where did you get that?

Thing is, I try not to make assumptions about you. You post lots of great things about lots of music I love, so I'm trying my hardest to make excuses and find the reasonable side. But the stuff you have come out with today is racist-apologist bullshit, and people are right to call you out on it.

well I think a lot of these posts can read two ways but I feel like I'm posting something saying that a lot of racial humor is essentially harmless compared to some of the other stuff posted ITT and a lot of people are reading it as me trying to make myself feel justifed in telling racist jokes

I appreciate the thought but I'm not talking about "white guys telling racial jokes to each other", I'm talking about when they actually are around/friendly with each other.

this sentence is not very clear, to say the least (do white guys tell racist jokes to each other when they AREN'T around/friendly with each other?)

xx-post uh no one in the thread found that stereotype funny! Where did you get that?

Yeah, iirc, that thread was based pretty much around that character not being funny in the least.

hey frogbs, when I pull my eyes to the side and go "me chinese, me play joke.." is that racist or just kids funning?

it's only funny if there aren't any chinese people around duh

xx-post uh no one in the thread found that stereotype funny! Where did you get that?

guess you gotta wait 3 days to find out

this sentence is not very clear, to say the least (do white guys tell racist jokes to each other when they AREN'T around/friendly with each other?)

I mean this as "white guys who are friendly with black/Asian/Latino/gay/whatever people"

Wait now, I'm confused. Its okay to tell racist jokes behind closed doors, but only if I'm not friendly with anyone from a minority group?

I still don't understand. are these white guys hanging out with other white guys, or hanging out with members of the minorities in question when making these jokes

xp

way xp: like even when you're talking about the black vs. asian tension in the early 90s, that stuff still comes from racism being a fixture provided by white people, using stereotypes that were created by white people, all coming from a history of oppression and colonization from white people, etc. it's not so simple to just say that individual people doing racially charged things to people of color exists in isolation, you have to look at the big picture, which starts with colonization.

and yeah that article is one thing, but it's wikipedia. when i say "institution" i mean the sociological usage or w/e

maybe we should just make it multiple choice to be clear. Which of the following scenarios are you talking about:

A) A bunch of white guys, who aren't racist (really!), talking amongst themselves and making racist jokes
B) A group comprised of a mixture of ethnicities, with the white guys making racist jokes
C) A group comprised of a mixture of ethnicities, with everyone making racist jokes about everybody

I'm pretty sure option A is flat-out racist, option B is flat-out racist, and option C probably ends in a fistfight.

hey frogbs, when I pull my eyes to the side and go "me chinese, me play joke.." is that racist or just kids funning?

yeah this is pretty stupid, but can you claim that you've seriously never laughed at a racist joke? even if you didn't feel good about it? basically - what Laurel said

w/r/t Sixteen Candles I didn't think the character was funny because he clowned on Asian people, I thought the character was funny because it was so ridiculous on its face, IIRC I'm not the only person who felt that way

ad hominem tu quoque is a fallacy frogbs

that doesn't make you more right, that makes them more wrong xp

zach, that wiki article is the 'sociological' meaning of the term institution. i don't think i've ever heard the term used to describe Western Civilization in a sociology text, and if you have, i'd be curious in reading it.

but can you claim that you've seriously never laughed at a racist joke? even if you didn't feel good about it? basically - what Laurel said

why does this matter? I will totally cop to having laughed at racist stuff (Long Duk Dong even!) when I was younger and stupider - that doesn't mean it isn't racist, it just means that I was enough of an idiot to find racist things funny.

lol mordy this is dictionary.com, and i recognize the irony of quoting it:

Sociology . a well-established and structured pattern of behavior or of relationships that is accepted as a fundamental part of a culture, as marriage: the institution of the family.

I didn't say that as a defense of finding racism funny, frogs.

like the term institution was designed to talk about specific ways of organizing human beings. afaik American society institution or Western society institution is just too vague to actually have value.

yeah zach, that's a good example of what i'm talking about. the family can be an institution. all of society can't be an institution tho. societies are built on the intersections of numerous institutions

the institution is a "fundamental part of a culture" but not the culture itself

C) A group comprised of a mixture of ethnicities, with everyone making racist jokes about everybody

this is pretty much what I'm talking about, I don't want to sound like the "BUT I HAVE BLACK FRIENDS!" guy but I was part of my college's international club for a couple years and I've seen this play out without fistfights or any hard feelings as most of it is basically making fun of stereotypes or whatever - even though I guess it technically is racism, I'm arguing that this is basically harmless.

this is semantics but i'm not talking about "institutional racism" as a sociological thing (ie not combining both words to contain a set sociological meaning in itself), i'm talking about racism with the modifier of "institutional" and using the sociological def of that word. wikipedia is not doing this. none of this actually matters, but i think this is the confusion.

zach, it's okay if you had something else in mind. these words mean something tho -- at least in some context and ferreting out the accepted meaning helps avoid confusion.

racism is an american institution