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From: faustus@ucbvax.UUCP (Wayne Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: "Offensive" jokes, minorities, real men, &c.
Message-ID: <811@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-May-84 12:12:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.811
Posted: Sun May 20 12:12:34 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 21-May-84 05:58:46 EDT
References: <1791@randvax.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 24

| Just a minute, here.  When you consider the cost in human lives caused
| by racism just in this century...
| I've been around enough to know that the beliefs presented
| in BLKTRAN are taken quite seriously by a sizable minority of the
| population.  And I've no delusions that such `jokes' are harmless.

Racism is a terrible thing, but how many of the people who tell
these jokes do you think are really racists? I think very few.
And certainly reading jokes like this is not going to make a
racist out of somebody who isn't one already. What you are doing
is confusing a stereotype with the members of a group, which is
exactly what the racists you criticize are guilty of. You might
say, "There's nothing at all funny about the things that black
people have been subjected to in our history", but this isn't
what people make jokes about. People make jokes about a certain
stereotype of black people, which few people would consider to
be representative of the majority of black people, and obviously
there is something funny about this stereotype. If you are so
overcome by feelings of horror and guilt when you read a joke
like this, I think there is something wrong with you. 

	Wayne