Oklahoma Fraternity Incident, Just a “Joke?"

The SAE fraternity at the University of Oklahoma recently gained unwanted attention after a videotape surfaced showing members openly chanting the following:

“There will never be a ni**** SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me. There will never be a ni**** SAE”. [The “n" word is blanked out by most media]

Psychologists researching prejudice often claim that many prejudices have moved underground or become more covert. But we frequently see evidence of anti-outgroup statements being made with shocking boldness. In the present case the students were singing rather gleefully about the lynching of Blacks. Lynching is an illegal activity whereby a mob of people executes a victim (Cozine et al., 1996). In the past, American Whites seized Blacks, typically men, and hung them from trees until dead. (as an aside, I often have to explain to my Canadian students what lynching is; I hope this is a sign that such incidents are increasingly moving to the background of history).

I’ve not yet heard anyone suggesting that the SAE chants were “just a joke” or “just tradition” or in some other way harmless, inoffensive, and not an indication of bias. But these defences are sure to surface. In one of my previous Psychology Today columns I discussed cavalier humour beliefs, whereby people try to cast off jokes as “just jokes”. The implication by the communicator is that audiences should not read much into jokes. The research I discussed in that column revealed, however, that such beliefs can facilitate the expression of social dominance motives, and can also contribute to more prejudice.

Let’s consider a few recent examples of communications passed off as harmless, ripped from the news headlines.

• Fox News hosts, in reference to combat-active female jet pilot Major Mariam al-Mansouri, joked about “boobs on the ground” and laughed about whether she could “park” the plane after bombing runs.
• “I love animals, but when I see her, I can’t help but think of an orangutan.” Comment by Roberto Calderoni (Italian politician) regarding Cécile Kyenge (a Black minister of integration in Italy). He later called this comment a “little joke.”
• Marilyn Davenport (Orange County, California, GOP Central Committee member) emailed a picture of President Obama as a non-human primate, later dismissing it as merely a joke.
• Basketmouth (Nigerian comedian) joked that African women are relatively unwilling to have sexual intercourse, necessitating rape by the ninth date. He later claimed to be helping women by drawing attention to rape as a social issue.

Clearly people use “humour” in ways that derogate and delegitimize others. This keeps the targets in disadvantaged positions relative to the dominant group. Jokes and humour, we are repeatedly told by the communicators, are “just” jokes. And very often they are simply that. But jokes can also be very powerful methods to communicate harmful thoughts, as clearly recognized by your local schoolyard bully. In a past column I discussed how dismissing bullying incidents as “boys just being boys” similarly contributes to the problem of intergroup oppression (Hoffarth & Hodson, 2014).

We all know how it can feel to be caught up in group behavior. It’s relatively safe to assume that some of the students chanting a pro-rape chant at the University of British Columbia were succumbing to social pressure to conform, as might be the case for some of students in the SAE video. Although this may help to explain their behaviour psychologically, it should not be used to justify or rationalize their behaviour. Students chanting in favour of non-consensual sex, or in favour of excluding racial groups from social organizations (and worse, being flippant about atrocities such as lynching), need to recognize that their words not only hurt their targets but normalize intergroup disparagement.

Both scientists and social advocates alike must themselves resist the urge to treat disparaging intergroup humour as just jokes (see also Billig, 2001). After all, isn’t that exactly what bigots want us to do?

References and Suggested Readings:

Billig, M. (2001). Humour and hatred: The racist jokes of the Ku Klux Klan. Discourse and Society, 12, 267-289. doi:10.1177/0957926501012003001

Corzine, J., Huff-Corzine, L., & Nelson, C. (1996). Rethinking lynching: Extralegal executions in postbellum Louisiana. Deviant Behavior, 17, 133-157.

Hodson, G., Rush, J., & MacInnis, C.C. (2010). A “joke is just a joke” (except when it isn’t): Cavalier humor beliefs facilitate the expression of group dominance motives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 660-682. DOI: 10.1037/a0019627

Hodson, G., MacInnis, C.C., & Rush, J. (2010). Prejudice-relevant correlates of humor temperaments and humor styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 546-549. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.016

Hoffarth, M.R., & Hodson, G. (2014). Is subjective ambivalence toward gays a modern form of bias? Personality and Individual Differences, 69, 75-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.05.014