just a little joke >> by jonathan schildbach >> *spark-online issue fourteen

"Do you know why black people are black?" I wasn't sure I was hearing what I was hearing.

Without waiting for anyone to ask why, the eight-year-old blurted out "because their moms drink too much coffee when they're pregnant!" She giggled spastically.

I thought about the vast number of ways I could respond to that. What surfaced first was a snide "Where did you hear that?"

"My dad told me."

Not to be too judgmental, but I hadn't really thought highly of her dad before. "Y'know, I don't think you should repeat that."

My wife began asking a few more questions. 'Aren't there black kids in your school? In your classroom? Do you think they would think that's funny? Do you think it would be funny if they said you were yellow because your parents drank too much Mountain Dew or Lemonade' The girl tried to diffuse the situation by saying "I wouldn't care," with much less enthusiasm than she had a minute before.

I try to put such incidents in context. Is this any worse than the kinds of things my friends and I say from time to time when the conversation drifts that way? I don't know. Occasionally, a distasteful remark will be made, but usually presented in such a way that it's understood that it's the kind of joke only ignorant people would make, and we aren't ignorant--right?!?

There are different shades of all of this. But what really constitutes a joke playing off the notion of stereotypes, compared to a joke that is actively engaging stereotypes?

And are there other lines to be drawn? I try not to get too bent out of shape about any jokes, even vulgar ones, unless the person telling them is chronically offensive in the same way. There's such a fine line between being appropriately aware and hypersensitive. I'm of the general opinion that the culture as a whole has gotten far too willing to attack many of the wrong things. Stupid remarks get far too much attention. And like I suggested in an earlier article, that attention builds in a destructive way, to where we all get off the hook because there's always someone worse.

Of course, I can't pretend that knowingly offensive jokes are not a part of my vocabulary.

Why do Mexicans and Blacks hate lawn sprinklers? Why is the Black sign of power a clenched fist? How do you get a hundred Vietnamese people in a phone booth? How do you get a hundred Ethiopians in a phone booth? Recognize any of these gems?

Are there those small nuggets of truth in them that are supposed to make comedy transcendent?

I grew up hearing similar jokes frequently around school and the neighborhood. I'm not sure why they were so prevalent, or if they were that much more prevalent than other types of jokes. I know that unless a conscientious adult happened to overhear one, there were few consequences to telling them. I think we were more likely to get busted for swearing or referring to sex or genitalia.

Not long ago, I found an old audio-tape of myself and some friends hanging out in my room, probably about 9th grade, recording what we thought were hilarious, improvised comedy routines. I'll spare you the gory details, but we sound like a bunch of moronic rednecks, spewing out racist, homophobic jokes almost faster than the magnets could handle. I like to write that off to immaturity, and being in a nearly all-white environment where we couldn't have known better, but that hardly seems justification. I know I didn't learn any of that from my parents, from my church, teachers, or books I read. Of course, I have to admit that growing up in suburban America in the seventies wasn't the kind of experience that was likely to gain one a deep understanding of issues of race.

Later in life, attending college in Eugene, Oregon, the PC atmosphere removed most of those kinds of jokes from my immediate surroundings, and eventually from my thought processes. But on the first day of my first post-college, almost-real job, the (Jewish--for what it's worth) owner of the company walked into the room where most of the salespeople were housed, where I did filing, and told a joke employing many of the epithets I had been distanced from for years. Many of the salespeople laughed heartily, I hope only to show their support/fear of the boss, and not because they thought what he said was actually funny. Being the new guy, I just kept my mouth shut.

Now I wonder if that's the right tactic--keeping our mouths shut. Do we need to attack these jokes, or just ignore them? If we laugh, are we evil? If we laugh at the jokes that only make fun of our own ethnic group, is that appropriate? What if a black guy tells a funny joke about black guys--can white guys laugh at it? People go back and forth about these questions quite a bit. And I don't think there's an answer, except maybe in the most obvious cases.

When my wife challenged the young girl for telling a racist "joke" it struck me as appropriate for multiple reasons. One is that they are both lumped together in the same general ethnic group, and so probably have to deal with the same basic stereotypes themselves. The other is that my wife was genuinely concerned about what might happen to that girl if she repeated the joke at a time when it could have more severe consequences. Based on this quick formulation, maybe we should all look out for "our own," and ourselves, and make sure we don't say things that are going to potentially generate hostility. But I've already admitted I'm not sure how that works.

Maybe the simplest advice is best. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Do not do that which you would not have known." Of course that would only work in a world where people were more concerned about how they got attention. Maybe the simplest advice is too simple.

Jonathan Schildbach is proud of his German heritage--and as such, pays $8 for a haircut--$2 per side.