Paging the Racist Joke Acceptability Bureau

[steepholm]

"And now, Profile. This week we look at the new Chinese leader-in-waiting."

Thus the Radio 4 continuity announcer, while I'm getting my tea yesterday. Half-listening, for a moment I think she has told me that the new Chinese leader's name is In Wei Ting. I laugh involuntarily, then choke it back. Did my id just make a racist joke? Or was I merely laughing at my own stupidity (a source of constant amusement)?

Chinese jokes seem to be weirdly acceptable, or at any rate widespread, on the TV comedy scene at the moment. You can see people like Dara Ó Briain and Chris Addison doing Chinese impressions that are almost childishly racist on national television - and then excusing it with a beguiling guilty laugh.

I don't really understand who gets to decides which kinds of racism "count". Is there an official line on such things? I can't remember the last time I heard an Irish joke being broadcast, or even a gentile-told Jewish joke. Jokes about Americans and the French are rife, though - and Germans too seem to be fair game. Broadly speaking the rule seems to be that, the more powerful you are, the more you are allowed to be mocked for your appearance, accent, or national character. From that point of view, the popularity of Chinese jokes is a very backhanded compliment - especially as they always come with a kind of cringe. One expects Ó Briain to say something about "overlords" in a Kent Brockman voice.

On the other hand, I also hear jokes about, for example, Greece - and although they're usually related directly to their current financial woes, it's hard to stop that leaking into a general image of the Greeks as a race being lazy, corrupt, etc.

Comments

[jadelennox]

I think it also has something to do with who you're friends with, not just power. Ultimately, American jokes are fine, because Britain and America get on like gangbusters. French jokes are fine, because for all that is a multi-century rivalry, it's also a train ride away. Also, for good or ill -- mostly ill -- the default French and American person in the minds of someone from the UK is almost certainly white. Americans speak English, and most English speakers and French speakers can get by with a little bit of handwaving, not to mention how long we have been studying each other's languages.

Chinese jokes are about a power where were the faces are minority faces in the UK by a long shot, where the language doesn't share a common root with English and isn't commonly taught in schools, and with whom the UK doesn't particularly have a long history of good relationships. *cough* opium wars *cough* They frighten me; I'm starting to hear so much generic hating on China that even some of my loved ones who should know better are starting to morph it from humor and a little bit of political fear into old-school racism. I know we live in different countries, but I suspect it's related.

[steepholm]

I suspect so too. And I predict you'll hear a lot more where that came from.

[sheenaghpugh]

I think "the more powerful you are, the more you are allowed to be mocked" is central to all joke-telling, which is why an old lady slipping on a banana skin isn't funny, while a pompous mayor in full regalia is. It's also why anti-English jokes are more acceptable than anti-Irish and wolf-whistles at men, though I don't usually like them, are less annoying than the same directed at women. The best example I can think of is John Aubrey's tale of the proud Dean:

His Antagonist, Dr Price the Anniversarist, was made Deane of Hereford. Dr Watts, Canon of that church, told me that this Deane was a mighty Pontificall proud man, and that one time when they went in Procession about the Cathedral church, he would not doe it the usually way in his surplice, hood, etc, on foot, but rode on a mare thus habited, with the Common prayer booke, in his hand, reading. A stone-horse (stallion) happened to break loose, and smelt the mare, and ran and leapt her, and held the Reverend Deane all the time so hard in his Embraces, that he could not gett off till the horse had done his bussinesse. But he would never ride in procession afterwards.

There's something in us all that looks at a proud pontificall person and wants to see that stone-horse galloping over...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Agreed - and thanks for the story of Dean Price! Of course, it wouldn't have been as funny had the Dean not been pompous as well as powerful - but that distinction is hard to make at a distance.

Still, laughing at people who are less powerful is also a persistent (if less acceptable) strain of humour: hence the existence of Irish jokes - and, within Ireland, Kerry jokes, and I'll wager that the Kerryfolk have some biting things to say about the inhabitants of Dingle.

The case of the Chinese is ambiguous, because individually they seem less powerful - not as free, not as rich - but as a nation they are more powerful than we are and likely to become still more so. We are also dimly aware that their civilization bears comparison with that of the West. So, we are caught awkwardly, halfway between a sneer and a cringe. Let's hope the wind doesn't change.

[sheenaghpugh]

I think on this occasion it was easy to tell at a distance, because it's made clear that the dean should have been walking; it was the very fact of him being mounted (!) that betrayed his pride.

The thing about Kerry/Dingle highlights another facet of humour, the desire to have a go at one's nearest neighbours or rivals - hence all the Bristol anti-Welsh jokes and the Cardiff references to Swansea Jacks. A Guardian reporter once had to make a grovelling apology for calling Cardiff City fans racist - he thought they'd been calling their opponent a "black bastard" when of course they were really shouting "Jack bastard" - much more acceptable!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

The power differential is at play with Bristol/S Welsh relations, due to the whole penny-the-less thing. I know Bristolians who still refer to Welsh people as the penny-the-less boys.

With the Chinese, I don't think it's acceptable, actually, but as a nation the new century will be theirs. There's also the issue that the Chinese tend to be incredibly prejudiced against anyone who isn't of Han origins. Does a Uighur person count as Chinese? Can they tell racist jokes (well, they do, anyway).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

"Penny-the-less boys."

Not an expression I've heard. Is it something to do with the General Strike?

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Apparently to do with Welshmen coming over to Bristol in the 1920s, i.e. the Depression, and undercutting the locals on wages by 1p.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

re "Jack" vs "black" - a white politician in largely-black Washington DC got in trouble for using the word "niggardly".

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Occasionally a US newscaster, or someone of that ilk, will go on the air responding to some story about China by doing a transcendentally crude Chinese imitation - holding their eyes at a slant and saying "ching chong chang" in a sing-song accent; that sort of thing. It's amazing that they do this, but they always get in trouble for it.

There is one good example of a Chinese joke in American politics. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the "Who's on first" routine, an old vaudeville standby popularized by the comedians Abbott and Costello. Less than a minute of them at this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfmvkO5x6Ng) will be enough to give you the idea, if you don't. Well, when Hu Jintao was appointed President of China in 2003, the New Yorker published this. (http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/hart/humor/hu.html) Of course, the joke was on Bush, not on the Chinese.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I've seen that routine referenced on numerous occasions, but not I think the original until now.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Abbott (the guy on the right) and Costello must have filmed this at least half a dozen times, but that's perhaps their best rendition, even though the audio on the YouTube copy drifts out of sync.

Of the copies and remakes, I'm particularly fond of this translation into mock-Elizabethan. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaGHVWKrcpQ)