Where by “best” we mean “ridiculously offensive.”
Sent to me by a co-worker:
A Somali arrives in Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, “Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!” The passerby says, “You are mistaken, I am Mexican.”
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. “Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!” The person says, “I not American, I Vietnamese.”
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, “Thank you for the wonderful America!” That person puts up his hand and says, “I am from Middle East, I am not American!”
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, “Are you an American?” She says, “No, I am from Russia!” Puzzled, he asks her, “Where are all the Americans?” The Russian Lady checks her watch and says…
“Probably at work.”
Two issues here.
1. The joke itself.
I’m sure there are plenty of incarnations of this joke set in any number of cities, likely “including” the most prominent minority groups that live there. This is the version that hit my inbox.
By my count, just about every other sentence contains something offensive. Let’s just stereotype the hell out of everyone.
Lazy immigrants. Check. Never mind a lot of immigrants work harder to get here in the first place than many of us that are born here do in our entire lives. They many of them go on to bust their tails at jobs that are incredibly demanding that we are “too good” for. We look down on them for it, but are secretly glad that they’re doing it so we don’t have to. There’s also the part where African immigrants are, on the whole, far better educated that native-born Americans.
I especially love the grammar (or lack thereof) in each supposed immigrant’s sentence. “I not American, I Vietnamese.” “Thank you for the wonderful America!” WTF?!
Anyway, it’s fairly obvious all that’s wrong with that joke. That doesn’t bother me quite as much as…
2. My co-worker that sent it to me.
This speaks volumes to me about her character. She’s in her mid-20s, white, from a Chicago suburb, went to college in Iowa. One of the other engineers. I knew she was a little right-leaning as far as politics go. Fine.
What continues to amaze me about society in general, especially people in their mid-30s and younger, is that they just say things that you would hope that they wouldn’t actually believe, but you would at least think they’d know enough to not say out loud in front of people they weren’t completely sure would agree with them. It doesn’t make it better if they do think that anyway, but I’d expect a higher level of awareness. I suppose I should be relieved that they out themselves so I can address it, or at least be aware myself.
So it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the other guy at work that sent it to her in the first place would find it funny and pass it on to his buddies. They’re all 40-ish white guys, most of them born and raised in Minnesota in exurban to rural areas. They say inappropriate shit all the time. I’ll tell you another story sometime about one guy, who I otherwise really like, who treats the POCs noticeably differently (to us) without even realizing what he’s doing.
But I would expect her to know better. At a minimum, don’t send it at work.
Would it make it better if she sent it to her white friends and not to me? Does that necessarily imply that she would know that a POC would take offense (because I’m the only one in our peer group of about 7, and one of two amongst the 10 professionals in our department)? Would that “sensitivity” be an automatic indictment, or would it just demonstrate that she might know that that would not be compatible with my particular sense of humor? Of course I’d never know if she passed it along to everyone but me.
In any case, her sending it to me clearly demonstrates ignorance or some kind of wrong-headed thinking.
But what do I know. Cockfighting makes me giggle.
