Does a single person here find this racist? My rant on my sociology class

[Sandman]

When I first heard the joke, the explorers were shipwreck survivors, 'bouga-bouga' was 'chi-chi' and there was no mention of cannibals.

I suspect the lecturer altered the joke to make it seem more racist. Or the most racist incarnation of the joke was selected, ignoring less offensive ones.

[Agathon]

The clean shaven Sikh is pretty funny. The Sikh community must have laughed at such stupidity. I know I do when I see adverts that are supposed to depict Antipodeans.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Err- heard any really funny jokes about victims of thalidomide? Told any to a person affected by it?

How about child molestation jokes, or rape jokes?

The old one about what's worse than dating Jack the Ripper?

Of course when you see the effect one of those jokes has on a person who has been raped, the humour seems, well, not humorous at all.

Humour can be intended to hurt, as any playground or school bully could attest. Or indeed, any wit such as Alexander Pope, or Oscar Wilde.

Have you seen Patrice Leconte's film 'Ridicule'?

A good example of the consequences when jokes go too far.

Humor, when understood as such, is harmless. Only when people react as if it wasn't humor is there a problem.

[The Mad Viking]

molly bloom

Here is an article written by a person of colour, from The East African, but without all the PC crap. It also deals very nicely with the slavery restitution issue, IMO.

Cannibalism was part of many neolithic and mesolithic cultures.

And whom did my ancestors eat?

By WYCLIFFE MUGA

It started off as one or two voices, crying out in the wilderness; but it has been steadily building up and will soon reach a crescendo: Africans are demanding "reparations" (i.e. compensation) for the slave trade of the 18th and early 19th centuries. A Pan-African Reparations Forum (Panref) has been constituted, and an "eminent persons" committee formed to look into ways and means of cashing in on the anticipated windfall.

The argument goes that if Germany has paid money to the descendants of Jews, Poles, and other nationalities who provided slave labour for the Nazi war machine, then this question of reparations must be taken even further back. Present day Africansmust also be compensated for the fact that their ancestors were abducted, and taken away to toil on the slave plantations of the "New World" (as the America's in general were termed at the time).

Dissenting voice

Already one dissenting voice has been raised against this clamour for compensation: President Abdoulaye Wode of Senegal has declared the whole idea to be absolute nonsense. He pointed out that his own ancestors kept slave armies to do their fighting for them, and that he had no intention of paying any form of compensation to anyone who might claim descent from the ranks of these slave armies.

But there is an even stronger argument against reparations as applied to the slave trade of over 200 years ago. And this is that many African communities also profited from this particular brand of private enterprise. Most foreign slave traders, whether Arab or European, did not go very far inland in search of slaves. They depended rather on Slave Raiders – war-like tribes who attacked their more peaceful neighbours, captured the survivors and sold them to the traders. So reparations, properly conducted, would have to begin with the Slave Raiders, and only then move on to the Slave Traders.

But it was not only in order to obtain slaves for trading purposes, that Africa's war-like tribes of the 18th and 19th centuries attacked their neighbours. Cannibalism was not unknown on the continent during that period, and a raid on a peaceful village could have been as easily for the capture of slaves, as for acquiring a ready supply of fresh meat for the attackers. (This would seem to indicate that the now popular "take-away" meal was invented in Africa, hundreds of years ago, and not in 20th century America).

Pre-colonial cannibalism on the African continent is not a subject that historians have adequately addressed. Information on the subject is purely anecdotal, arising from the memoirs of early European missionaries, explorers, and administrators. Ask any African whether the tribe he belongs to practised cannibalism to any extent at all, a hundred or so years ago, and he will definitely say, No. If pressed, an elderly African will probably say that in his early youth, there were strong rumours that a neighbouring tribe had such a practice; but certainly not his own tribe.

Embarrassing chapters

Mind you, this aptitude for glossing over the embarrassing chapters of one's history is not a uniquely African trait. The undisputed champions in this field are, surprisingly, the well-mannered, soft-spoken, hard-working Japanese. The Japanese will freely discuss their glorious history of a few hundred years ago: of Samurai and Shoguns and so on. But mention the barbaric quality of the Japanese colonisation of Korea and Manchuria; mention "the rape of Nanking" or the "comfort women" who were an integral feature of the Japanese Imperial Army, and the eyes of your Japanese friend will suddenly glaze over.

Only a few months ago Kenya witnessed the unusual spectacle of a street demonstration by Korean citizens resident in Nairobi. And what were they protesting against? The soaring crime rate in the capital city? No, they were part of a worldwide series of protest marches by Koreansupset about the fact that in a newly-released Japanese school history textbook, the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army in the period roughly corresponding to the Second World War, had been glossed over in the most shameful manner.

Textbook's impression

Reading that textbook, the impression that would be formed is that the Japanese Colonisation of the Korean Peninsula was a humanitarian intervention. And yet there are Koreans still living whose memories are haunted by Japanese torture methods; by Japanese massacres of civilians; and by other atrocities committed over that same period, by the Japanese colonists.

"Try to be more like the Japanese", is generally sound advice to give to any African country or community. It means, usually, "Be more industrious, be thrifty; be patriotic; practise self-denial; work for the greater good of your country." But this cannot apply when what is under discussion is an honest and frank assessment of a people's past. The Japanese people have yet to confront what they did to their victims in Korea, and elsewhere in their Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

If the "eminent persons" of the Pan-African Reparations Forum are serious about seeking reparations for the effects of slave trade on the continent, then they must consider these two questions: Number one, ''Whom did my ancestors capture and sell to the Coastal Slave Traders, and what reparations should I make to the living descendants of the communities that my ancestors raided for these slaves? Number two, "Whom did my ancestors eat, and what do I owe the descendants of these people whose bodies provided nourishment for my ancestors"?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by skywalker
it's HUMOR

So that makes it okay? Cool, what do you call 10,000 Republicans on the bottom of the ocean? A good start!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh no, I'll report you to Ming for hate speech!

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Cannibalism was part of many neolithic and mesolithic cultures.

Actually, most studies of cannibalism say that very few cultures practiced it, and those that did only in ceramonial situations. I have never seen cannibalism ascribed to African cultures in any academic study. In Papua New Guinea, they eat their their own dead. Then you have cases like the Donners or the Beans or Liver Eatin' Johnson. Cannibalism, is the very rare exception, not the rule.

[Elok]

Dunno about Papua New Guinea, but in Irian Jaya on the other half of the island, they had a longstanding tradition of cannibalistic revenge-raids against neighboring tribes, which would get the raiders revenge-raided in turn, and so on. Nobody even remembered how it started. Probably tribe A said tribe B's chief's wife was fat nine hundred years ago or something, and it grew from there.

Doesn't matter now, since the Indonesian government decided they were an embarrassment, stepped in, and forced them to change to symbolic "ceremonial" raids or eat napalm. Which is why, whenever I hear somebody talk about an entire way of life being crushed out of existence by the government, my first thought is usually, "you say that like it's necessarily a bad thing."

Oh, and my Mom says his test should have joked, "I thought of Dinty Moore Beef Stew" instead. After all, it's a Can o' Bull. Yeah, my mom has a corny sense of humor.

[chequita guevara]

I like your mom.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


So that makes it okay? Cool, what do you call 10,000 Republicans on the bottom of the ocean? A good start!

Again: humor, when understood as such, is harmless. There is only a problem when people do not take it as humor, and that's THEIR fault, not the fault of the person telling it.

[chequita guevara]

Humor doesn't make things okay. It's not okay, you went to Subway. Racist, sexist, homophobic humor may be funny, but it doesn't stop it from being racist, sexist, or homophobic. Humor is divorced from social realities. No more than paintings are, no more than movies are, no more than any other type of speech there is. It's is protected, and it should be, but it's not immune to criticiism.

[Kuciwalker]

So WHAT if it is "racist"? If it is humor, it isn't saying a stereotype is true, it's simply using it to be funny. And DUH it isn't immune to criticism - but that doesn't make that criticism very intelligent. "He told a joke! I'm offended!"

[The Mad Viking]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Actually, most studies of cannibalism say that very few cultures practiced it, and those that did only in ceramonial situations. I have never seen cannibalism ascribed to African cultures in any academic study. In Papua New Guinea, they eat their their own dead. Then you have cases like the Donners or the Beans or Liver Eatin' Johnson. Cannibalism, is the very rare exception, not the rule.

PC rubbish. If a researcher starts with the precept that cannibalism was extremely rare, you can make it seem difficult to find proof, and easily discount every missionaries' report as anecdotal and biased.

In addition, even if a small percentage of cultures practiced cannabilism (very few), that would still mean that many cultures did so. Because there are several hundred tribes you are dealing with.

Finally, I was speaking historically as well. There is archeaological evidence of cannabilism in many cultures no longer with us - even advanced cultures in meso-america, south america and the Minoans.

Did anyone practice "daily" cannibalism? Of course not. It was always ritual, or based on the relatively rare event of tribal conflict.

All I said was that cannibalism was practiced in Africa, New Guinea, and the Amazon basin.

It was.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking


Finally, I was speaking historically as well. There is archeaological evidence of cannabilism in many cultures no longer with us - even advanced cultures in meso-america, south america and the Minoans.

Did anyone practice "daily" cannibalism? Of course not. It was always ritual, or based on the relatively rare event of tribal conflict.

All I said was that cannibalism was practiced in Africa, New Guinea, and the Amazon basin.

It was.

And yet you provided no evidence of such, except for a vague article which had no names and dates for these cannibalistic practices.

I'm not saying there may not have been cannibalism in Africa during the Stone Age- what I'm asking for is proof of such an assertion. The kind of proof that say, transmission of kuru in New Guinea provides, or human bones that have been flensed and cooked prior to consumption, or digested human matter found in faeces-all of which have been used to show routine cannibalistic practices in places such as Fiji, or Chaco Canyon, or the Aztec Empire.

A bland assertion that 'it existed' is rather like those old maps that say 'here be monsters' or Othello's speech about all the wondrous places and beings he has seen.

Names and places and dates when you start to attribute cannibalism please.

Nobody says for instance that Western Europeans routinely practice eating each other because of the consumption of human flesh during the siege of Stalingrad, nor that the Japanese routinely eat their own because of what Japanese soldiers did to Allied servicemen, Pacific Islanders and each other in the Pacific theater of war.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
All I said was that cannibalism was practiced in Africa, New Guinea, and the Amazon basin.

It was.

I'm sorry, I don't believe your say-so. I've done some study into the issue. Reports of cannibalism are routine when one culture is describing another, but evidence is generally not. Rarer than human sacrifice, which was pretty damned rare.