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This is the third installment of a three-part series examining racially ambiguous humor. Please see Part 1 and Part 2 before reading this.
Not too long ago, I overheard the following joke, which I am reproducing here to the best of my ability.
A man on his deathbed is given a few moments with his closest business associates. He calls them close to him and says: "When I die, I ask that you put in my coffin an envelope with $100 -- as a gesture of our business relationship and the generosity that we've always shown each other." All three men readily agree and they spend the rest of the time talking about more pleasant things. When a few days later the man dies, his business associates follow-through with their promise. First one approaches the coffin and places an envelope with cash inside. When he sits down, the second associate gets up and places his envelope next to the first. Finally, the last of the men, the Jewish partner, approaches the coffin. He removes the two envelopes inside and places them in his own pocket, replacing them with a single envelope containing a $300 check.
I admit I found it funny, but the question here is: Is it racist...or anti-Semitic?
In Part 1 of this series, I distinguished between racial humor and racist humor. Clearly, the joke above is racial in nature. It's obviously racial by design, and it's worth pointing out that it doesn't have to be. There are, in fact, many non-racial versions of this same joke. Here's one example:
A rich man nears the end of his life and is determined to try to take it with him. He calls in his doctor, his minister and his lawyer and gives each of them $50,000 in cash with instructions to place it in his coffin. In due course, he does die. At the funeral, each of the men is seen to approach the coffin and place something inside. Later, they are lunching together and the minister blurts out:
"I have to confess, the church needs a new roof and I held back 10,000 dollars - I didn't put it all in."
The doctor hangs his head a moment and says: "I'm afraid I too let our friend down. I only put half of it in and kept 25,000."
The lawyer shakes his head: "I am so disappointed in you. I'll have you know I put my personal check for the whole 50,000 right in that coffin."
But such versions do not interest me. My point here is not to examine what makes a joke funny but to try to say something about what makes humor racist, or not. To do that, I need to work with racial content.
So back to the first version: Is it racist? Is it anti-Semitic?
I suggest that the answer is...it depends.
The joke could reasonably be perceived as either praising Jews for their sharp minds (the Jewish man managed to keep his promise to his business partner without having to bear the financial costs of the other associates) or ridiculing them for their devious nature and single-minded stinginess. How it actually is perceived depends on who is telling it, the spirit in which it is being told, and the relevant social context.
Let's consider two different hypothetical contexts:
The Bar Mitzvah:
The occasion is a Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish coming of age ceremony (literally, "one to whom the commandments apply) which marks a 13-year-old boy's transition to adulthood. The person telling the joke is the boy's uncle. The uncle and most, though not all, of the group around him is Jewish. Though not observant, they are happy to have witnessed and participated in the ceremony, pleased with the boy's performance, and proud to be part of the Jewish people.
Is the joke anti-Semitic or racist? We can probably agree that it is not. In this case, although the joke could evoke both positive (cleverness) and negative (stinginess) stereotypes, it is likely that the setting and the spirit in which the joke was told combined to make only the protagonist's cleverness highly salient to the audience, which may not even notice that the joke also evokes some negative stereotypes.
Moreover, even if these negative stereotypes are noticed, they are unlikely to offend anyone in this context. This is because, while we can theoretically be prejudiced against our own racial and/or ethnic group, it is generally assumed that we are aware of our own in-group's strengths and accomplishments. As such, we generally have more freedom to poke fun of (and even criticize) our own group. After all, when we do so, we are also poking fun of ourselves.
The Online Discussion Board:
Now imagine that this same joke, rather than being told, is posted as an online comment in a discussion forum that is being dominated by strong criticism of Israeli military action that has, at times, deteriorated into explicit anti-Semitic statements. Because the online forum allows anonymous participation, we do not know anything about the person making the post.
Is the joke anti-Semitic or racist? Although we don't know anything about the person making the post, given the nature of the discussion (criticism of Israel and Jews), it is the negative stereotypes of the joke's protagonist's that are likely to be salient. As a result, the joke effectively functions to lower the regard that the audience has for the target group (in this case Jews), which is the very definition of racist or, in this case, anti-Semitic humor.
Notice that the intention of the person making the above post is largely irrelevant. To make this point, let's give this person the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not intend to lower the audience's regard for Jews and is, in fact, genuinely puzzled that his well-intentioned joke is being perceived as anti-Semitic. "I heard a Jewish guy tell this joke at a Bar Mitzvah," he says, "and everyone thought it was great. How can it be anti-Semitic?"
The answer, of course, is that perception is everything...and because the identity and intentions of the joke teller are not known to us, perception, in this particular case, is determined almost entirely by the context. Sometimes, it really does make all the difference.
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