A new genre

[lydy]

So, at work last week, I was treated to a new genre of racist humor with which I was not previously familiar: two white people telling hi-larious racist jokes about white people. The thing that was really funny, though, was the idea that anyone, anywhere, could possibly find a racist joke offensive, and the actual butt of their humor was not white people, but people offended by racists jokes.

An example? I only remember one example. The example I remember is, "We will achieve true racial equality when we teach all white children to call each other crackers." "Oh, god, yes, and we'll say it happened with you, at your house!" "Racial equality is just a cracker away."

There was quite a lot more. I spent a lot of time trying not to listen. I cannot think of any way to object. What I'm objecting to is not the humor, but the meta-joke. And I know from experience that you can't call people on meta-jokes. There's plausible deniability, and they use that. That is, after all, the point of telling the joke like that.

They also spent a fair amount of time being amused by various black comedians, including Dave Chappelle (who is genuinely brilliant although not usually to my taste) and Rick Jones (?) with whom I'm not familiar. They seem to especially like the humor where the comedians (who I think are both black, certainly Dave Chappelle is) make fun of racism. But it very much feels like they like being able to say these terrible things and claim that they are funny. There is a routine, I think a Chappelle routine, in which someone who was adopted and blind from birth is a terrible racist and says the most horrible and racist things. The joke is, of course, that this blind from birth person is black. Now, I'm pretty sure that Chappelle's point is how utterly silly and meaningless our concepts of race are. But I strongly suspect that the two men I'm working with at the moment actually think that the slurs themselves are funny, and that they're childishly delighted to find a context in which these things can be said.

Possibly, I am doing these two a terrible disservice. I don't read minds. But gods was I uncomfortable at work last week.

Comments

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Obviously they weren't serious; otherwise they'd be telling white trash and trailer trash jokes (either that or those jokes are too close to home while "cracker" can be safely compartmentalized as being Not Us). I don't tend to follow comedians these days as most of standup makes me nauseous, but what I've heard of "cracker" jokes reeks of privileged upper class whites playing at poking fun at other whites while remaining safely apart Because We Aren't Those People. Either that or I'm too West Coast for "cracker" to make sense, given that "Cracker" is originally old-Florida in origin.

(and yes, I have my own family collection of rednecks, white trash and trailer trash, close-in family to boot. But we are proudly loggers, farmers, truck drivers and etc and we don't need no freakin' meta jokes to make fun of our own)

If you want to have fun, start repeating the meta-joke with "redneck," "white trash," and "trailer trash" to see how they react (that said, I can understand avoiding the tension at a work site). Or just say "Crackers? You mean rednecks?" (or whatever you feel like). I'd do it, but I also have a tendency to start searching for Big Red Buttons on the Forehead to push around people like this, because they generally tick me off and they usually tend to be uneasily middle class, therefore easy to poke at on these subjects (at the least I tend to think of these types as pompous asses). Bob Boze Bell used his character Honkytonk Sue to deflate a few of the Arizona variants of this ilk back in the late 70s, with a strong (and physical) lead female who could outdrink, outfight, outdance, and outride the puffed up white men of the pretentious class (alas, the comic only went for four issues). I put up a Sue poster in one office to jab at a supervisor of this ilk, and other than an outraged splutter of "sexual discrimination," (the dialog tag read "Remember, girls, if a man has to brag, he'll be the first to sag." Yeah, I was bold in those days) he uneasily ignored it. But then again, I also embrace my liberal hippie redneck cowgirl self.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

A strong argument for never telling jokes at work, especially loudly so that everybody has to listen to them.

Is one of the jokers that creepy/stalky guy you were hoping to be away from soon? I don't think I ever heard whether your transfer ever came through.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Nah, the smirk erases the plausibility of the denial.
Actually, the only meta in that direction I've ever run into is "WASP" jokes making fun of the whole genre:
Q: How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One
Q: How can you tell the bride at a WASP wedding?
A: She's wearing a white dress
Although, I suppose you could get meta about boring "normal" WASP being the unmarked state, but I don't want to.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. THAT. I used to hear it a lot in the 1980s. I never found a good way to push back against it, as a white person hearing the version you describe. (There's a set of sexist jokes I think might be related. It's not making fun of women, or even feminists--it's making fun of the sensitive new-age guys who object to sexist jokes.) I hadn't heard a joke like that in years, and thought the subgenre had faded as explicitly racist name-calling became less socially accepted. There's still plenty of racism. But the racists are all saying "I'm not racist, but..." rather than "Well, sure. Doesn't everybody hate those people?"