Disturbing, racist post

[csgray]

So now wikipedia, where anyone can post anything they want as truth, is a valid source for legal definitions? We are supposed to accept that if wikipedia says there is no relation between racial/ethnic jokes and racism, then it must be true?

Racism is in the eye of the beholder, and so is humor, but vicious racial/ethnic/religious humor have been used to dehumanize various people as part of a system of justification for treating those people as deserving of discrimination, or in the case of Nazi Germany, outright extermination, for centuries. During the lead up to the Holocaust "jokes" about Jewish people that emphasized a belief in their lesser status as human beings, and reinforced vicious negative stereotypes, were standard fare at nightclubs and cabarets. During the period between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era ugly "jokes" about African Americans were also standard fare for entertainment. The minstrel show was one of the most popular forms of entertainment for the working classes. These "jokes" are a tool to reinforce, and make publicly acceptable, a mindset that holds that some people are subhuman and deserving of an unequal place in society because of their race, religion, ethnicity, class or income status, or sexual orientation. If you cannot see how these "jokes" and racism, or other bigotry, are related, in spite of what wikipedia says, then you are being willfully blind to how hate is encouraged and spread in a community. "Jokes" like this are a way to spread a world view, sharing these "jokes" with the next generation while they are young and impressionable is a way to encourage them to see the world through the same perspective as the "joke" teller. Instead of saying outright that you think these groups of people are less human than your tribal group, you just make jokes about shooting them, and then hide behind the "it's just a joke, don't you have a sense of humor?" screen.

When I was growing up I lived in community which still had a lot of people who had been very active in the KKK in the 30s and 40s, including people like Scout leaders, ministers, and teachers. The "jokes" I heard people who had leadership roles in my 4-H group tell were routinely directed towards African Americans in the most derogatory terms possible, and were absolutely related to the underlying racism of these people. Those jokes were used to pass on attitudes about African Americans to the next generation; in a community where there were only two African American families it was an easy way to spread hate and derision for people who were virtually unknown to the kids hearing the "jokes". This was probably not a conscious act of propaganda, but it was an act of initiation into a mind set all the same.

I didn't read the original thread that prompted this one until all the debate started to rage, and I probably would not have started a whole new thread about it, but as much as I personally dislike feeding the trolls, I also probably would not have let it pass without expressing my discomfort with what I see as racism hiding behind humor. I was raised to believe that ignoring such things helps grease the slippery slope which has discrimination, lynchings, and genocide waiting at the bottom. Those things all happen when good people look away, and allow other human beings to be objectified as less than fully human, for long enough that treating others in inhumane ways becomes socially acceptable as long as they they belong to one of the "lesser" groups.

Carol

[birdmove]

When I was in first grade in the Seattle area, about 1962-63 my dad was sent out to the mid west to plant Minuteman missles in silos all over the area during the cold war with Russia. The family went to.For two years we lived in Great Falls,Montana, Rapid City South Dakota,Parshall North Dakota, and, finally, Warrensburg, Missouri.I had to switch schools constantly and try to make friends.
In Warrensburg, one recess a group of kids asked me where I was from-whether from the "North or South". I said I was from Seattle, so I guess it was the North.Next thing I knew I was being beat up by a group of kids. In the 1960s at least, they were still fighting the Civil War!!
I did make friends there eventually. Luckily this treatment didn't totally destroy my lovable disposition.(joke!).


Jon in Puyallup, Wa.

[Guest]

Well this is all pretty in lighting. We have a person that starts a thread and even labels it as a racist thread. This Makua person and others personally attacks me form the very beginning. When I respond with a light hearted response to this racist thread Rob follows my post 4 min and 34 seconds later calling me a troll.

Robs post:
Well, I am checking in from my holiday travels and see that the season of Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men is fine and dandy here on Punaweb (sarcasm for those who do not recognize it).

A few comments on today's Punaweb headline topics on guns, BB guns and racist comments.

1. I do wish people would more often take the position of Assume the Best and Ask Questions, it saves a lot of grief.
2. I do wish people would not so quickly take the bait when trolling statements such as Tom's "joke" are made.
3. Tom Lacky, like all of us, is a complex person and one of his complexities is his joy in creating arguments. He has been, and continues to be, most successful at this with his gun topics. It seems to me that his BB gun topic wasn't getting argumentative enough so he tossed off his racist "joke", the bait was taken and I am confident Tom is now happy with the result. Tom's holiday present to himself.
4. So a lot can also be avoided by not taking the bait. In internet forum circles this is known as "Do Not Feed The Trolls". Tom will be pleased I'm sure to see the term troll used here.... but some commentators are right - such jokes are thinly veiled admissions of truth.

So best wishes everyone. I will check in occasionally and see just how far off track this can go.

Happy Holidays,

Assume the best and ask questions.

Punaweb moderator


Here is the part I love:


It seems to me that his BB gun topic wasn't getting argumentative enough so he tossed off his racist "joke", the bait was taken and I am confident Tom is now happy with the result. Tom's holiday present to himself.


Well golly gee, the fact is as you state my “racist joke” was in the opening statement. Just how dose one decide to toss off a racist joke in an opening statement because it wasn’t getting argumentative enough? Go figure this one, when there hasn’t been any response to that thread yet. I have been insulted, belittled, and even labeled as a Troll and yet all of this is acceptable. But my God don’t make a joke before it has been cleared thru a comity of the Kumba society.

Too funny folks, way too funny.

The Lack


The Lack Toons

[Kapohocat]

Tom, you remind me of my Dad (and its usually a good thing!). He would hang out with the old guys in front of Mr Ed's bakery and Glass from the Past in Honomu. One of the "younger generation" (which refers to any one in Berkeley in the 60's of which Honomu had quite a few) would start with the NIMBY stuff, or something else political, or condemning a fairly innocuous ethnic comment. My Dad (who is 100% Mexican) would play the devil's advocate, sometimes just because the old guys were bored and got quite the entertainment out of watching the fall out. I would continually tell the Berkelyites to chill, they are just goading you! But nooooo!!

Of course, there is payback. Dad was on his deathbed (literally) and we did not think he would live until my brother's arrival in a few hours. One of Berkeleyites came to visit him - they said "Oh did you see what Obama is doing on this or that today?" just to tease him. Dad's BP went from 55/15 (seriously) to 100/60 in just a few minutes!!! hahaha At the funeral, my brother thanked the Berkeleyite for giving him the opportunity to talk to Dad one last time!

[missydog1]

A thank you to Da Vinci for noticing ... []

At this point of the "conversation," we might want to get clear on what "racism" is. Racism is the belief that a person's RACE in and of itself predisposes that person to have certain characteristics, which are not really changed by culture, economic status, family upbringing.

Racism does not require the racist to hate. It is a racist belief if one subscribes to all Caucasians having certain traits, even if the racist loves Caucasians. Or if one is Chinese, and believes the Chinese are a race (which they are not) with certain superior qualities. More often we see an elevation of one race in conjunction with degradation of another.

Racism is ignorant, through and through, because people are shaped by so much more, but at the same time, if we examine our ugly thoughts, even people who are absolutely not racists by intent, will almost cetainly have absorbed ideas that linger in the unconscious.

Someone giving a talk on racism at U.C. Berkeley once told me something that bothered me and also stuck with me. She said that everyone is a Racist, the question is of degree.

There are blatant racists.
There are racists in denial of feeling any form of racism. (i.e. liberals)
There are recovering racists, who acknowledge that we all have had the seed planted, and we have to examine our thoughts to root it out.

I was raised as a liberal who believes that racism can go away if we all join hands and sing Kumbaya (so to speak). After that talk and while at Berkeley, I began working on becoming a recovering racist, someone who is not in denial about the pervasiveness of racism. WorkING, as in "in progress."

Now as to ethnic jokes, nationalities are not races. Anthropology tells us that the very notion of separate races may be deeply flawed, as we may all have common ancestors. Cultural groups are not races.

So what we are really talking about here is prejudice, bias, assumptions about certain groups.

I have always felt that a lot of these jokes are vicious and perpetuate ill will and bias.
However, I have to recognize that Hawai'i has taken a different road in its approach to being multi-cultural. In Hawai'i, it is accepted and beloved by most locals to tell jokes involving the various ethnicities -- to the point that if you can't laugh at it, you can't even get the culture. Is it all good? Probably not? Is it all hateful. No, not that either, especially when so many people are mixed and can relate to 2 or 3 of the groups in a tri-ethnicity joke.

Because I want to see the culture here as it is without laying too much of my mainlander bias on it, I've listened and read, and watched all of Rap Reiplinger -- and I recommend anyone who intends to live here to watch his videos that I linked and more, because it is something that virtually all the locals think is hilarious. (A great talent, RIP).

Tom's opening about the "cans" -- well, I still think that it lacks the elements of a joke.

I took a great course on the comedy of literature back at Berkeley, which might sound like an easy course but it was really difficult. We had to figure out what it is about specific forms of humor that works to amuse people. Tom's effort there doesn't have much going for it. It doesn't even work as an oral joke, because the "cans" as suffix aren't pronounced like cans. It's read only. There's no "storyline." It's thin.

I believe that humor centered on ethnicities works, when it does, because it brings laughter and catharsis and maybe acceptance out of a point of tension, a source of potentially bad feelings is diffused and placed into the joke realm.

If it's not funny, or complex, and doesn't say anything interesting, it fails at that purpose, and simply becomes an unnecessary comment. Tom's remark brought up the idea of shooting people of other nationalities instead of inanimate targets. That's all it did, and it was presented as something you say to a young kid as he gets his first version of a gun.

So that made it disturbing and kind of ugly, not humorous. I wouldn't have started a topic about it, but I didn't admire it either.

[oink]

Hmmm, this is not good, I actually agreed with the majority of Kathy's post. I'll have to come back and read it again later because that's just not right.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[Guest]

K

[konadave]

quote:

---

Originally posted by csgray

So now wikipedia, where anyone can post anything they want as truth, is a valid source for legal definitions? We are supposed to accept that if wikipedia says there is no relation between racial/ethnic jokes and racism, then it must be true?

Racism is in the eye of the beholder, and so is humor, but vicious racial/ethnic/religious humor have been used to dehumanize various people as part of a system of justification for treating those people as deserving of discrimination, or in the case of Nazi Germany, outright extermination, for centuries. During the lead up to the Holocaust "jokes" about Jewish people that emphasized a belief in their lesser status as human beings, and reinforced vicious negative stereotypes, were standard fare at nightclubs and cabarets. During the period between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era ugly "jokes" about African Americans were also standard fare for entertainment. The minstrel show was one of the most popular forms of entertainment for the working classes. These "jokes" are a tool to reinforce, and make publicly acceptable, a mindset that holds that some people are subhuman and deserving of an unequal place in society because of their race, religion, ethnicity, class or income status, or sexual orientation. If you cannot see how these "jokes" and racism, or other bigotry, are related, in spite of what wikipedia says, then you are being willfully blind to how hate is encouraged and spread in a community. "Jokes" like this are a way to spread a world view, sharing these "jokes" with the next generation while they are young and impressionable is a way to encourage them to see the world through the same perspective as the "joke" teller. Instead of saying outright that you think these groups of people are less human than your tribal group, you just make jokes about shooting them, and then hide behind the "it's just a joke, don't you have a sense of humor?" screen.

When I was growing up I lived in community which still had a lot of people who had been very active in the KKK in the 30s and 40s, including people like Scout leaders, ministers, and teachers. The "jokes" I heard people who had leadership roles in my 4-H group tell were routinely directed towards African Americans in the most derogatory terms possible, and were absolutely related to the underlying racism of these people. Those jokes were used to pass on attitudes about African Americans to the next generation; in a community where there were only two African American families it was an easy way to spread hate and derision for people who were virtually unknown to the kids hearing the "jokes". This was probably not a conscious act of propaganda, but it was an act of initiation into a mind set all the same.

I didn't read the original thread that prompted this one until all the debate started to rage, and I probably would not have started a whole new thread about it, but as much as I personally dislike feeding the trolls, I also probably would not have let it pass without expressing my discomfort with what I see as racism hiding behind humor. I was raised to believe that ignoring such things helps grease the slippery slope which has discrimination, lynchings, and genocide waiting at the bottom. Those things all happen when good people look away, and allow other human beings to be objectified as less than fully human, for long enough that treating others in inhumane ways becomes socially acceptable as long as they they belong to one of the "lesser" groups.

Carol

---

Carol,

You are correct that I should not have used Wikipedia when I meant the dictionary. Here I pasted them here for you:

First I want to state there is a HUGE difference between the word racial and racism. Unfortunately many people use the two words interchangeably. Here are the definitions as I found them on http://dictionary.reference.com:

Racial:
1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of one race or the races of humankind.
2. arising, occurring, or existing because of differences between races or racial attitudes: racial conflict; racial motivations.

and now Racism:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

So as you can see your statement: "Racism is in the eye of the beholder...." is completely ridiculous. By your reasoning I can call you a racist or a child molestor and I don't even know you. You really just proved my point for me. This is exactly why we need to understand the words that we use. Otherwise Carol I could just call you a racist or a child molestor and anything else I feel like and there would be no words called Libel, Slander and Defamation of Character. And in order for Mauka and you and anyone else to TRUTHFULLY call The Lack a racist you must have proof of hate. And you can't use the joke as proof because by definition the joke is not racism.

In order for there to be Libel and Slander there has to be a strict definition of these words. I would suggest you look up Libel and Defamation of Character and you'll see that is exactly what Mauka and anyone else who called The Lack a racist is doing. The last time I looked Libel and Defamation are against the law. And racism is defined by the hate of a race. So like I said, without proof of hate there is no racism. So please don't try to re-write the english language just to try and make a point. We have definitions for a reason.

Based on what you say then anyone who tells a racial (ethnic) joke is a racist. That is also ridiculous as you cannot tell me that you have never told and ethnic joke ever in your entire life. So by your own definition you are a racist. See how silly what you are saying is?

Let me also say that telling jokes about Jews did not cause them to be killed. Did you really just try and relate telling jokes caused Genocide? I hope that you didn't just try and say that. I will assume that I am not reading that correctly. What I am saying is that a racist can tell racial jokes. It still doesn't make the joke racist. Only the hate and propagation of that hate is racism. Not the joke itself. So let me ask you a question. If a racist tells a racial joke isn't he really just telling the truth as he sees it? Then it was not meant to be funny and is not a joke. So do you have some proof of The Lack hating a race?

Let's face it, unless we all use the proper words in the correct way we can turn a conversation into any way we want. But I know you wouldn't want to use a word incorrectly, would you? Once the words racist, racism, ethnic and racial are used as they are defined and meant to be then we can all be on the same page. So let's just all look the words up in the dictionary and use them as they were meant to be. That way we all know that if we call someone a racist we need to have proof of that persons hatred towards a race. All jokes aside. JMHO

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[SBH]

Live Aloha.

[Guest]

K