Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!lll-winken!uunet!ficc!jeffd
From: jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Racist Jokes
Summary: Response
Message-ID: <3491@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 20 Mar 89 17:44:18 GMT
References: <439@corpane.UUCP> <3100@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <9773@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <7597@killer.Dallas.TX.US>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 77

In article <7597@killer.Dallas.TX.US>, Wolf Paul writes:
> In article <3459@ficc.uu.net> jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell) writes:
> >
> >You *can't* be "born Jewish", any more than you can be "born Presbyterian".
> >You can be born to persons who believe in Judaism; that doesn't make
> >you Jewish.
> 
> Hold it, Jeff -- "Jewish", unlike "Presbyterian" or any of the other
> "Christian" denominational designations, is not merely a designation of
> religious affiliation, it is an ETHNIC group, like "Irish", or "Hispanic".

Yeah, right.  Sammy Davis, Liz Taylor, and Myron Cohen are all part
of the same ethnic group.  

> >If you're wife is now an atheist, she is *not* Jewish.  You can't be
> >a Jewish atheist anymore than you can be a Baptist atheist.
> 
> Someone should have told that to Uncle Adolph ...

It is *precisely* because psychotics like Hitler see Jewishness
as racial that it is a good practical, as well as theoretical,
idea to view Jewishness as religious.  

BTW, even the New Testatment supports the idea of Jewishness
as religious, not racial.  Read Galatians 3:29.

> It is a fact that people raised within a particular culture or subculture
> exhibit certain common traits, and frequently respond to various situations 
> in typical, predictable ways. To recognize that, to talk about it, whether
> in the form of anecdotes, jokes, or otherwise, is not in itself offensive --
> especially when these jokes originate within the group concerned.

But ethnic jokes generalize to the point that they almost imply that
these responses or traits can be ascribed to *every* member of the
group -- a highly anti-individualistic concept, and one not
supported by the evidence.  Wolf, I hate to burst your bubble,
but there are a lot of philanthropic Jews, a lot of industrious
blacks, a lot of non-alcoholic Irish, a lot of freespending Scots,
a lot of non-bigoted Southerners.


     [Wolf quotes from Bill here in reference to a "Jewish joke"]
> >> Third, I laugh at it for the same
> >> reason that we, later, laugh at all disasters that we manage to
> >> survive and grow from (my childhood, in this case).
> >
> >And for this you need the joke to be told in a "Jewish accent".
> >Sigh.
> 
> Well, yes, if that's the accent he associates with his childhood 
> environment, and if he perceives the attitudes displayed in the joke
> to be somehow typical of his own ethnic group.

Well, to be fair, I decided to test various ethnic jokes without
any reference to an ethnic group.  The one above is next on my
list, BTW.  And you know what?  People laughed even *without*
turning the jokes into slurs!
> 
> >
> >Para un Tejas Libre,
> 
> 
> I dare say "Tejas" is a lot more "libre" than a lot of other places
> on this globe ...

True!  But that's no reason to forego improvement!

Para un Tejas Mas Libre,

Jeff Daiell



-- 
"Buy land.  They've stopped making it."

                 -- Mark Twain