Racism and Humor

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 10:29 AM 6/3/99 -0400, Henry Liu wrote:
>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.

Henry, add to it the whole Holocaust debate in the US, whereas the 'rape of
Nanking" and similar Japanese attrocities in China (which reportedly were
disapproved even by Hitler) get barely mentioned.  What makes the
difference is the ethnicity of the victims - somehow, dark-skin people
appear to be less victims than pink-skin people to most Americans and, I
presume, Brits (see Geeorge Orwell's essay _Marrakech_ on that), even on
the "lefty" listservs.  Likewise, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is
not justified in the same manner as carpet-bombing of Dresden.  The former
was to save "American lives" whereas the latter to "avenge the Holocaust."
Even, or perhaps expectedly, it did not occur to an average US-er, liberal
or otherwise, that the massacre of dark-skin people is the cause worthy
avenging, let alone in a way that may put US reputation at risk.

Of course the same discourse continues to this day - explusions of mostly
white Kosovars amount to the second Hitler that warrants a military
response, whereas killing a million or so blacks in Rwanda is only a "
regrettable tragedy."  

wojtek

PS. I am not white, I am Eastern European.