An interesting debate

[Pixelated]

This is ongoing on a thread on my FB page.

Is it racist (and thus obviously offensive) if you tell jokes about your own race (or ethnic group or religion)?

[Greenday]

Basically, yes. But everything comes down to the audience and whether they care or not.

[Pixelated]

That seems to be the opinion of many in the debate. I recalled an incident in which a Jewish editor told a Jewish joke, and I asked if I -- a non-Jew -- was actually supposed to lecture him on the inappropriateness of this. I was told no, but I could have made him aware that it made me uncomfortable and why. (He thought the joke was hilarious, by the way ... and so did I.)

To me this is pure stick-up-the-ass nonsense. The joke was about his own people; if HE is not bothered by it, I can't see why I should be.

I personally have a Heinz-57 background (German, English, Irish and Scottish are what I know for sure), I'm Canadian-born, and I'm female. By the same token, I cannot tell any German-English-Irish-Scottish-Canadian-female jokes.

Yeah, that's not ever gonna happen. I'm in pretty poor shape if I can't laugh at myself.

Don't know if you've ever heard of the comedian Jonathan Pie, but he just put out a video on identity politics. One of the things he said was "Welcome to 2018, where context and intent are no longer required to brand your fellow citizens a fucking racist."

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

So I'm of two minds on this.

Side 1 - Everyone is racist, period. We can no more remove ourselves from our social context as anything else. So making jokes about race are inherently ALWAYS racist. About another race, it is a joke you have no standing to make. About your own, it is an experience that externally may be viewed as bullshit. Most people (or groups) are not the best ones to claim who and what they are to others. As such, any such joke ultimately can (and will) result in divisiveness. Divisiveness if someone laughs to hard. Divisiveness if no one laughs.

Side 2 - Yea, making jokes about your own race is pretty harmless. When you punch your own, you're keeping things pretty even.

I don't believe in punching up or punching down though. I tend to subscribe to the theory we are not the best judges of relative power in our own times.