Racist video from South Africa (LINK)
February 29th 2008 06:12
Are you a racist?
Ok, that’s a hard one.
Well, how about this:
Why is the Afghan airforce so easy to train?
Answer: You only have to teach them to take off
Or how about:
What is a Jew’s biggest dilemma?
Answer: Free pork
Or
What do you get when you breed a black with a Mexican?
Answer: A thief who is too lazy to steal
Did you laugh? Are these jokes funny?
To be honest, the only joke I really feel okay about laughing at is the joke about Jews – why? Because I am Jewish and I feel I have licence to laugh at and make fun of some of the stereotypes about Jewish people. Also, my humour is not my way of saying ‘I hate Jews,’ when if told by someone who is not Jewish, could be.
I have certainly laughed at racist jokes in the past, always uneasily. That was before I understood how humour operates to normalize racism, and that when we participate in that humour, we condone racism (or sexism, or homophobia). As a result I have been accused in the past of not having a sense of humour. This may be partly true. I don’t really ‘get’ practical jokes. I am definitely not what one might call a ‘prankster’ and don’t even get the humour in whoopy cushions and spitballs.
Even were I to concede that some pranks are funny (as certain Candid Camera clips can be) there is nothing funny about a prank that is, if one is to be frank, just a veiled act of hatred. That becomes even less funny when those being made fun of are black and those having a laugh are whites. Even in so-called post-Apartheid South Africa.
Some days ago, this video of white students ‘initiating’ black cleaners at the University of the Orange Free State was released making headlines all over the world. In this video, the Afrikaans narration states, “Once upon a time the 'boere' (Afrikaners) lived peacefully here on Reitz Island, until one day when the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary." The young men prepare a mixture of dog food, with garlic (a racist jibe at those who believe garlic cures HIV), and then urinate into it, before microwaving it up and making the cleaners eat this mixture. The cleaners are then ‘rewarded’ with a bottle of whiskey, reminiscent of how racist colonial systems routinely ‘pay’ their workers with alchohol. The video ends with the words: ‘That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration.’
Click here to watch on You Tube
I felt physically nauseous after watching this video. The banality of the cruelty, the seeming friendliness of the young men towards these women, as if this is all just ‘a little bit of fun’ is what makes it all the more frightening. But the message of these young men is unmistakable. Oh Apartheid … we so hoped you were dead and gone, but your malignancy lingers on.
What is clear to me in watching this, is that when we use humour to dehumanize other people, we become dehumanized in the process.
Ghandi said it, didn’t he: we have to be the change we want to see in the world.
This is not the change I want to see.
www.joannefedler.com
Ok, that’s a hard one.
Well, how about this:
Why is the Afghan airforce so easy to train?
Answer: You only have to teach them to take off
Or how about:
What is a Jew’s biggest dilemma?
Answer: Free pork
Or
What do you get when you breed a black with a Mexican?
Answer: A thief who is too lazy to steal
Did you laugh? Are these jokes funny?
To be honest, the only joke I really feel okay about laughing at is the joke about Jews – why? Because I am Jewish and I feel I have licence to laugh at and make fun of some of the stereotypes about Jewish people. Also, my humour is not my way of saying ‘I hate Jews,’ when if told by someone who is not Jewish, could be.
I have certainly laughed at racist jokes in the past, always uneasily. That was before I understood how humour operates to normalize racism, and that when we participate in that humour, we condone racism (or sexism, or homophobia). As a result I have been accused in the past of not having a sense of humour. This may be partly true. I don’t really ‘get’ practical jokes. I am definitely not what one might call a ‘prankster’ and don’t even get the humour in whoopy cushions and spitballs.
Even were I to concede that some pranks are funny (as certain Candid Camera clips can be) there is nothing funny about a prank that is, if one is to be frank, just a veiled act of hatred. That becomes even less funny when those being made fun of are black and those having a laugh are whites. Even in so-called post-Apartheid South Africa.
Some days ago, this video of white students ‘initiating’ black cleaners at the University of the Orange Free State was released making headlines all over the world. In this video, the Afrikaans narration states, “Once upon a time the 'boere' (Afrikaners) lived peacefully here on Reitz Island, until one day when the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary." The young men prepare a mixture of dog food, with garlic (a racist jibe at those who believe garlic cures HIV), and then urinate into it, before microwaving it up and making the cleaners eat this mixture. The cleaners are then ‘rewarded’ with a bottle of whiskey, reminiscent of how racist colonial systems routinely ‘pay’ their workers with alchohol. The video ends with the words: ‘That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration.’
Click here to watch on You Tube
I felt physically nauseous after watching this video. The banality of the cruelty, the seeming friendliness of the young men towards these women, as if this is all just ‘a little bit of fun’ is what makes it all the more frightening. But the message of these young men is unmistakable. Oh Apartheid … we so hoped you were dead and gone, but your malignancy lingers on.
What is clear to me in watching this, is that when we use humour to dehumanize other people, we become dehumanized in the process.
Ghandi said it, didn’t he: we have to be the change we want to see in the world.
This is not the change I want to see.
www.joannefedler.com
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