Racism and Humor

[Henry C.K. Liu]

I have been accused on these lists of being at times unduly sensitive to
racist remarks and attitudes, and in fact of being guilty of reverse
racist offenses.  If I am guilty of that, and it may well be so, a
question can be put as why I, an otherwise reasonable person, should be
so excessively sensitive on this issue.  The answer may be that I live
in America, a society in which racism is rampant and pervasive and in
fact structural to its very core.  Perceptions are conditioned by past
experience. Anticipatory expectation is reflexive.  When one see a
paper-marche version of a solid brick throw at one's head, one ducks.
So when members of racial and ethnic minorities are hyper-sensitive
about racist remarks, attitudes or intentions, they are not merely being
duly paranoid, they are being reasonably self protective based on direct
personal experience and Lamarkian conditioning.
It is oppressive to argue that a specific remark or action is
technically benign and that the reative sensitivity itself is racist,
rather than acknowledging the collective quilt of a pervasive social
regime that give concrete meaning to that very sensitivity.  It is the
syndrome of blaming the victim rather than the crime.  Racism is so
pervasive in American society that only the blatantly racist acts are
recognized.  Much racism is accepted in America as normal and racial or
ethnic profiling is generally considered as common sense.  Third World
ambassadors have routinely been mistakenly redirected to the employee
entrance on their way to exclusive dinners at fancy restaurants and
private clubs (it would be funny if a black temporary employee is
mistakenly directed to the guest entrance), while a black person driving
an expensive car must be a car thieve or a drug dealer or both.  Chinese
rhetoric is more readily ridiculed than Soviet rhetoric and appeared
funnier to Americans.  Of course, this cannot be racism, but please tell
me what it is.
In many cultures, humors involves realizing a senseless situation or
one's own senseless errors.  American culture places humor more directly
at the expense of the victim.  One can see this in American cartoons
where violence and victimization are the main sources of humor.  America
also has an admirable tradition of standing up for the underdog.  In one
Western cowboy movie, I remember a scene in which John Wayne defended
the Chinese laundryman by declaring: "Don't pick on the Chinaman!"  The
same term was used publicly by President Truman in defending civil
liberty during the McCarthy era when he said on television about those
being investigated as "not having a Chinaman's chance".  Frnk Sinatra,
who was very active on the Anti-infamitory League, testified in a
televised Congressional hearing about his alleged ties to organized
crime that he routinely had his picture taken at casinos with would be
gansters and "Chinamen" from Hong Kong.  Only a few months ago, the
American Ambassador to the UN, Richardson, used the term "Chinaman" in
public, for which he later apologised in a public statement explaining
he did not realize the term as being offensive to Chinese people.  That
apology hurts more than the term itself.  And Richarson is of Mexican
descent.
Of course, no culture is perfect.  But very few other than America goes
around the globe setting itself up as the standard of decent behavior.

Henry C.K. Liu