Defining racism. Your thoughts?

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Blue, yellow, cheddar, feta, gouda, etc...we need to overlook our sectarian differences, and join forces against the common enemy: those who "don't do dairy at all"!

Heathen infidels!

Hmmmm, are you suggesting a cheesy truce to unite in hate, such intolerance! Lactose intolerance! (I am sorry, I felt the pun gods groan as I typed)

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/10/ohio_po ... ist_email/
So this guy apparently 'doesn't hate or dislike' black or hispanic people, and thought that it was 'just a joke.' Does that get him off the hook for sending out this email?

"Old white people have bad judgment about sharing racial humor" is newsworthy now?

you didn't answer the question. Do you think that 'joke' was racist, regardless of whether or not someone sharing it felt "hatred" (as opposed to just contempt) towards the people it stereotypes?

I'm not sure that a joke can be racist, not having sentience and all, but I'll try to indulge you. I could argue that the true target of the joke is affirmative action, which it satirizes (poorly) by presenting an illiterate black child as the winner of a spelling bee due to a set of increasingly ridiculous double standards, but if that was the intent the execution is lacking, and the joke is far too long. However thin it may seem, this 'mocking a widely despised government program' angle to the joke prevents it from being judged as purely racist, and injects some doubt into things.

Now, did the old guy forwarding this gem intend it as a send up of racial quotas and set asides, or did he think it was humorously mocking black people and their perceived inability to spell? Neither of us is in a position to know, and personally I'm not a big fan of passing judgment on people I don't know over things as petty as ill considered joke re-mailing. How are you so certain he even felt contempt?

Just for fun, let me give you a couple examples of what I think an unambiguously racist joke looks like:

Q) Why do Chinese people talk so funny?
A) Because their tongues are slanted too!

Q) Why are black men such dicks?
A) Cause they've got pubic hair on their heads!

See the difference? No ambiguity at all.

^
While I'm thinking about it, another old joke that can be taken several ways floated into my mind:


A black family is stopped at a red light in the South, when a bunch of white teenagers rear ends them. The sheriff shows up, takes one look and says "boys, exactly how fast were them there coons going when they reversed into you?".


Who's being made fun of here? The obviously racist sheriff? The backwards South where this kinda thing happens? Or is it a racist joke because the term "coons' is used?

The"backward South?"I take umbrage at that statement.

Oddly enough, Dox, I don't find jokes that make fun of physiological characteristics as bad as those that stereotype towards ignorance, greed, laziness, etc.

I don't give a damn what people's eyes or hair look like; I do care what kind of people they are. Those two jokes just make me go, 'Whaaaat? Was that supposed to be funny?' but I don't find them as offensive as the 'spelling' joke.

Sweet dreams are made of cheese. Who am I to diss a Brie?