Well, the thing is you can't really take it out of the abstract. Any attempt to codify this kind of thing will inevitably fall apart under the weight of it's own internal self-contradictions and exceptions. It's more about the vibe of the thing, the zeitgeist, as it were. To those who don't understand the difference between the word "nigger" and the word "cracker", I can't say much more than "pay more attention".
Like, pay attention to the reactions of others when you say things. Are people genuinely hurt? If so, try to find out why they are hurt and rather than shrugging it off as inconsequential try to empathise with the person and their situation. If it hurts a large group of people, especially if it has to do with either an unchosen commonality like race, or a group of shared painful personal and group histories like homosexuals or abuse victims, then it's probably a good idea to stay away from such things unless you want to be an arsehole. If you don't mind being an arsehole, then OK, but pay attention to how people treat arseholes and expect accordingly.
Take redneck jokes. Rednecks own redneck jokes. I rarely see anyone doing redneck jokes except rednecks. We have a similar thing with racial humour here too. Much of the world doesn't understand Australian racial humour (OK, we had that blackface thing on Hey Hey It's Saturday, that was shit, and there is a lot of racism here, don't get me wrong), especially of the type shown in something like Fat Pizza, where you have skips playing skips and lebs playing lebs and wogs playing wogs and gooks playing gooks and making all of the racist jokes around them, but they can because there's ownership of the jokes. We have another show playing here at the moment called Angry Boys (it should be on HBO there, either now or soon). There's a character in that, Gran, who makes heaps of racist jokes. Really racist, inappropriate jokes. But you laugh at her; the reaction is "Gran, you can't say that!", but you laugh, cos hey, racist jokes can be pretty fucking funny. The difference here is that it's being presented in a context where the racism isn't cool, it isn't ok, but it can still be funny; you're laughing at the racist, not the racism. It's very subtle and I will be interested to see how Americans react to it.
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Date: 7/7/11 23:16 (UTC)Like, pay attention to the reactions of others when you say things. Are people genuinely hurt? If so, try to find out why they are hurt and rather than shrugging it off as inconsequential try to empathise with the person and their situation. If it hurts a large group of people, especially if it has to do with either an unchosen commonality like race, or a group of shared painful personal and group histories like homosexuals or abuse victims, then it's probably a good idea to stay away from such things unless you want to be an arsehole. If you don't mind being an arsehole, then OK, but pay attention to how people treat arseholes and expect accordingly.
Take redneck jokes. Rednecks own redneck jokes. I rarely see anyone doing redneck jokes except rednecks. We have a similar thing with racial humour here too. Much of the world doesn't understand Australian racial humour (OK, we had that blackface thing on Hey Hey It's Saturday, that was shit, and there is a lot of racism here, don't get me wrong), especially of the type shown in something like Fat Pizza, where you have skips playing skips and lebs playing lebs and wogs playing wogs and gooks playing gooks and making all of the racist jokes around them, but they can because there's ownership of the jokes. We have another show playing here at the moment called Angry Boys (it should be on HBO there, either now or soon). There's a character in that, Gran, who makes heaps of racist jokes. Really racist, inappropriate jokes. But you laugh at her; the reaction is "Gran, you can't say that!", but you laugh, cos hey, racist jokes can be pretty fucking funny. The difference here is that it's being presented in a context where the racism isn't cool, it isn't ok, but it can still be funny; you're laughing at the racist, not the racism. It's very subtle and I will be interested to see how Americans react to it.