"Best Most Offensive Joke of the Year in a While"
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.
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Wow. I laugh at South Park, so I can't condemn the inappropriateness of it without being a hypocrite. But emailing something that offensive at work? I'm pretty sure you'd get fired for that, where I work.
I'll skip the "right-leaning" comment (hee!) and just agree that the Somalis and Hmong up there work their freakin' butts off. I've lived in a lot of places, and I've never seen immigrants work harder anywhere. Maybe they're just trying to keep warm? They certainly aren't lazy. (Everyone's lazy here in stl. It's in the water.)
I have to use my personal email address for work right now and the other day I sent you guys a forward of the "Top Ten Gay Animals". I accidentally sent it to a co-worker who has the same first name as a friend. Ooops. I don't know if she would be offended or not. Are gay animals offensive?
I'll skip the "right-leaning" comment -- Not that there's anything wrong with it....
I didn't get the Top Ten Gay Animals. :( I wouldn't consider the concept inherently offensive.
I sent it to your gmail account, I'll resend it. The article was kind of funny, "walruses are typically bisexual". I just hope she doesn't think I was making fun of teh gays or worse, thinks that anything relating to gays is offensive. Oh well, she works in Ohio so I'll never see her. She hasn't mentioned anything about it in our recent email correspondance.
This joke isn't funny to me AT ALL. Being a POC, and working in corporate america such as yourself, I must admit that I get the same type of emails at times. More than half of the emails like this, I get them because coworkers and customers who I interact with only know me via phone. My " POC friends" tell me, "you sound white." I guess that's why I get some of these type of emails. How in the hell does a person "sound white". Now that's another post, for your site, or mine.
There have been a few ocassions where I've meet these co-workers, and/or customers in person, and I could tell by their initial reaction when seeing me, "oh, you're not white....". And do you think I still get emails, like this, from these same coworkers/customers. Nope, not a ONE. I know they're out there. They're just not funny to me.
I think about things like this, but being the person I am, who doesn't harbor ill-will feelings, I get over it, and keep it moving.
I read your Cockfighting post at MetroBlogs yesterday, and I have the same sentiments as you regarding the fact that it's the word that totally cracks me up. In regards to the commenter, TPH, I wanted to say something to him, but didn't. My thought was, Erica just explained that the word "cock" is what totally cracked her up about the whole thing. Let it go!
Carla, how does one "sound white"?! That's insane! Tell them they sound stupid.
Anyway, I think the joke is offensively funny. But, I work in an industry that has very few white people and almost all my staff is an immigrant working hard for citizenship -- so *I* know the joke is totally not true. But, that's me. Some people (AKA, white folks sitting at home collecting welfare ) probably think this is truth, not fiction. And that's the sad part.
I don't want to come off sounding oversensitive or anything. I've laughed at overtly offensive and inappropriate things.
But it's all about context. I'm not saying I think she's a closet racist. I just think that this was in really poor taste. In this context, this didn't sit well with me.
I agree...it is an offensive joke but even worse that it was sent in the workplace. Some people don't know better. I thought I was going to starve to death on the National Day Without Immigrants that we had here last year. My favorite restaurants were CLOSED for the day. CLOSED! I love immigrants and diversity and culture of all kind which is one reason why my kids go to a Spanish speaking school...even though I don't know Spanish.
Other countries have great pottery, storytelling and artwork as a part of their culture but in America we are narrow-minded asses. That is our culture. It is embarrassing.
Depending on how much of a "friend" this is, I'd either forward it to Human Resources or suggest to her that such careless forwarding of such careless text could get her in some hot water if it got into the wrong hands. You've got to make it about her, though, or else she clearly won't get the message.
I'd either forward it to Human Resources or suggest to her
I considered it briefly, but a) she's not worth that much effort to me and b) our HR department is completely inept.
I'd just say something to her about how I didn't think it was funny before I tried to get her in trouble about it. And the posse of old white guys that she got it from in the first place say far worse things all the time. I really need to tell that story.
Does it make me ignorant that at first I didn't even understand why it would be funny? I only noticed that it was offensive. I used to get emails like that at work ( back when I worked) and I always sent back an email explaining my "policy" on forwarded emails and jokes. That usually kept people from sending offensive stuff.
Does it make me ignorant that at first I didn't even understand why it would be funny?
No, not at all. Definitely not.