Bad Jokes & Ebonics

David Casseres casseres at apple.com
Thu Feb 20 12:16:49 CST 1997


here's me

>> As for Ebonics "jokes," they're just the latest in a long American 
>> tradition of using exaggerated dialect to portray blacks as mentally 
>> inferior.  In this context, they are unmistakably hate speech.

and here's Joe Varo in one of two threads we seem to be conducting in 
parallel...

>But doesn't a hell of a lot of humor use the exaggerated dialect of many
>other ethnicities (southern American, Italian, British, German, even
>Canadian)? Are we no longer allowed to use this for humorous or satiric
>purpose? What about the Jeff Foxworthy "you know you're a redneck if..."
>schtick? Is this "hate speech"? Or is it hate speech only when certain
>groups are being lampooned?
>
>This discussion is leading me to one of two conclusions: either I am in
>fact a racist or a clueless naif.  And I don't care for either.

I don't think you're either of those, but I do think that (like a helluva 
lot of non-racists) you don't understand the mechanisms of racism.  Yes, 
it does depend on which group is being lampooned.  Grotesque dialect is 
used to *make fun of* any group that has a dialect; but it's used to 
*attack* only some of those groups, and in varying degrees of 
offensiveness.  The vulnerability of the people in the group is also a 
major factor.  A joke about an English accent doesn't wound any English 
people in any serious way, but I promise you the "Ebonics prayer" would 
be extremely hurtful to any African American who heard it.

Humor based on "redneck" speech strikes me as a borderline case.  It does 
in fact portray white southerners as ignorant and/or stupid, and that is 
a longstanding stereotype that's been used to hurt them, but I haven't 
heard that white southerners are actually offended by Jeff Foxworthy.  
Maybe it's because Foxworthy speaks as a white southerner himself, and if 
I did it they'd be injured.

It boils down to this: there are no simple rules for what is offensive 
and what isn't.  You have to actually think about it case by case.  And 
on the internet, where you really don't know a lot about who you are 
addressing, you have to think harder -- or if that's too hard, then you 
have to take your lumps when people get pissed off.

By the way, I know perfectly well that things I post offend some people.  
I make choices about it, and try not to complain when people take me to 
task about it.  A-and, how about that Major Marvy, hey?  He's a 
caricature of a certain kind of American.  Are we American 
Pynchon-listers injured by this attack?  No, because we don't think we're 
like Marvy.  We despise Marvy ourselves, so it's OK.  But there are 
plenty of Americans, unlikely to read Gravity's Rainbow, who would be 
VERY offended.  Fuck 'em, sez us, right?  And so does Pynchon, probably.  
So it's all picking and choosing.  We monkeys always enjoy a bit of 
Other-bashing, but it needs to be done consciously and intelligently.  
End of sermon, sorry.


Cheers,
David




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