Chris R. Tame on Racist Jokes

ASSESSMENT OF A PAPER SUBMITTED TO ‘THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMOUR’ ON VIOLENT RACIST JOKES
By Dr. Chris R. Tame
(2002)

Potentially, this paper could be a useful addition to the study of racist humour. It attempts to deal with a sub-category of racist humour – that of violent racist jokes. These are jokes that deal, not with ethnic stereotypes, but whose humour directly derives from the portrayal of violence against specific ethnic groups.

The author argues, correctly in my view, that violent racist humour can be conceptually distinguished from the traditional and common ethnic joke per se – a form of humour which research has shown to be universal to all cultures. An analysis of this specific form of racist humour – the violent racist joke – could thus be a useful addition to our understanding of the sociology of humour – and, perhaps, to the study of racism as a form of belief or behaviour.

Unfortunately, however, the paper does not deliver a truly scholarly analysis. From the very start one receives a suspicion feeling that the author is overly concerned with demonstrating the purity of his socio- political views. He thus assures us that using the term “joke” does not mean that the author finds the subject matter funny or acceptable. But we do not need to be assured by historians or sociologists of other subjects that they do not approve of chattel slavery, the Nazi gas chambers, the Holy Roman Empire or whatever before they embark upon their analyses. Why does the author feel that a declaration of faith is necessary?

Moreover, a number of assertions are made without any form of supportive evidence. For example, he “identifies” the word “nigger” as “the ultimate word of hatred in contemporary white racism” (p. 6). This is arguable. It seems to me that there are many other forms of anti-black abuse which are equally offensive. However, at the least one would like to be informed of why and how the author arrives at this conclusion, and what sort of methodology would be involved in measuring the hatred- content of specific terms of abuse.

The paper does have a central thesis. However, it is not stated initially and emerges only in a number of scattered paragraphs. That thesis is that this form of racist humour “requires the teller and the recipient to find the idea of racist violence – or at least the fantasy of racist violence – as a matter of fun (p. 13) … they [ie. such jokes] are also celebrating past historical racist violence, fantasising its present and future recurrence (p. 16) … Such jokes normalise the notion of this banal racist violence … all who laugh at the joke [re genocide of blacks and Jews] indicate by their laughter they too share the dream” (p. 19) … all such jokes … express a crude, extreme racist viewpoint” (p. 20).

However, the author himself unintentionally indicates that the phenomenon might not be as simple as he presents. It is probably true that many of those telling such jokes are indeed racists, and that “jokes instantiate wider views of the world” (p. 20). The fact that the author has drawn his jokes from a number of websites owned by KKK and other “White Power” advocates would certainly indicate that some tellers of such jokes clearly have a broader political goal in mind – “to present an extreme racist view of the world as ‘normal'” (p. 21) as the author states. However, the bald assertion that the mere telling of such jokes indicates such an outlook, and that the effects of such jokes is inevitably to legitimise or encourage racism is NOT self-evident.

We have seen similar such assumptions about the effects of various forms of popular culture – whether in fiction, drama, television and cinema, music, pornography etc – repeatedly demolished. The responses to, and “messages” received from such phenomena are not determined wholly by the intentions of the creator. The consumers of popular culture are not passive recipients inevitably conditioned by the messages they receive – they are active interpreters and critics. And such, I would suggest, also applies to the recipients of jokes.

I myself have seen both Jewish and black colleagues laugh at (and tell) violent racist humour aimed at their own ethnic identity. How could this be? The author himself in fact indicates one possible answer to this – but does consider it as an alternative, or complementary, explanation. He admits that the many violent racist jokes possess “other features that researchers have identified as general properties of humour: the joke sets up and subverts expectancies” (p. 10). Indeed, it is notable that one of the violent racist jokes the author quotes has also done the rounds extensively (and perhaps even originated) in a version in which lawyers take the place of blacks. The humour stems from the subversion of expectancies – and from the “sickness” of the subverted expectancy.

To properly examine violent racist humour then, it would be necessary to also consider them as a form of “black” or “sick” humour – at which people laugh specifically because of their outrageous unpleasantness and the extremity of their subversion of expectancies. There are many forms of such sick jokes, involving women, men, babies, children, many occupational groups etc. It would be hard to argue that the telling of, or the effect of such jokes, are to “normalise” brutality against, indifference to, or hatred of the victims in such jokes.

The author argues that “These jokes … are always more than jokes” (p. 21). However, he does NOT demonstrate that this is the case, or indicate or practice any form of methodology which would substantiate his view. Although it might well be true (and probably in all likelihood is) that SOME jokes are more than jokes, there is also evidence that the author does not take into account that would indicate that, just as a cigar is sometimes only a cigar (in Freud’s famous words), some jokes are sometimes just jokes – albeit sick ones.