A while back one of the black students I worked with had a tough as nails mother. She and I became friends. Every once in a while she sends me email jokes laughing at African Americans. I would not dare to send them on to anyone, I am sure that people would assume I am racist. But I laugh so hard at the stuff she sends.

I love Mencia, but don't think that the same jokes would be funny delivered by a non-latino.

My dad loves to send me Ole and Lena jokes. I think anyone can send those, because us Scandanavians aren't really persecuted in the US.

Thanks for the links, orchid. I found Peters very funny, too.

I find no humor in jokes about my race. I find no humorin jokes about other races. I find them offensive and this is why not everyone likes stand up comedy.

Of course I have run into thousands of racial jokes and racial situations in my lifetime traveling and working with many races but NEVER are they funny to me, they just aren't. I stop them in my home, and even scold people.

If I have a friend who is new and sends me a bigoted joke, I let them know I don't find it funny. They do not send my anymore.

Okay, I'm an alien. so what? I have a right to be comfortable in my own home and within my circle of friends. If they don't get it, they can drop me as a friend.

My closest friends are a singer, a female singer whose name I can't say, a doctor, and an 88 year old man who spends his time volunteering. These friends "smart," at racial jokes as I do. We JUST don't get it. What's funny about sterotyping races?

I beg to differ that only whites are racists! Of COURSE other races are racist! My own mother called the young girls of my own school, "white girls," and told me to want to be like them was classless. She pointed out what she thought were "tacky," things they did. She even thought their hair ribbons were ridiculas. I was dressed by a seamstress in designed clohting. If I wanted a trendy thing, like fishnet tights with my penny loafers, my mother would say, "those are for white girls." My mother was racist against white people, and she was half friend. (My father was first gen. Italian.)

My mother still finds "white people," lacking and her caretaker is a black woman whom she trust completely. My mother has hazel eyes and white skin, she is half Italian and half French. Yes, again, she is racist. She prefers other races to those that are "white."

Mexican mothers would prefer their children marry within their race. Spanish mothers the same and the GREEKS are REALLY serious about it! The middle easterners have no patience for interacial marriage in their families.

I've know, closely, all of these races and more. I was very welcome in their home but don't date their sons! LOL.

I can't count the "white," jokes based on the "white culture," that I've heard. EVERYONE get's the race problem sooner or later.

Seek, you say that everyone has racism in them and I will deny that till the day I die. I DO have my own problems. I am "in the air," for example. I see art everywhere, dance steps and hear music all of the time when I'm not doing that. I forget my keys, I forget my meds, I forget practical things all of the time which is a problem. Then again, so does my scholar son.

But, I am not racist and I just don't laugh at the jokes.

Has anyone ever thought of the genetic markers in each race? Yes, there are some that make those of the same race similar. They are not limited to facial features or body types, they lean over into personality and medical conditions, etc...

THOSE differences I admit to and can tolerate the statement that is true regarding this.

There ARE simularities amoung races, even mine. I think it's in the water where my family originated. Venice.


And here I was going to stay off this thread... I got some buttons pushed and so dived in again. I find much of what is written here in need of a great street education...
LOL

Dancer

Once again, I submit, for those new and those who forgot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpyskHMwRs

"Where is the love," Black eyed Peas...

Dancer

It's a good way to go, jabber. It feels so much better, especially on New Years Eve, to concentrate on how the vast majority of us get along just fine. It's one reason why people from all over the globe move here. To borrow from Tina Turner, we are "SIMPLY THE BEST."

Jabber,
I also like to think positive and am not a huge fan of public confessions. We all work on our issues. I like hashing things out, but I don't need to hear confessionals from anyone or deliver my own. To me, it seems to take away one's dignity.

Anno -- do you ever listen to Garrison Keillor on public radio? He always has these Swedish parents and the father speaks in monosyllables. Keillor is always talking about the Scandinavians in Minnesota, of which he's one, and dramatizes them as plain spoken and taciturn.

dancer, I think there's a difference between mean and bigoted jokes that make fun of the "other" for their difference, and the kind that orchid showed that highlight some little human characteristic. It's like literature -- the more specific a characteristic trait is in a novel, the more universal it seems. I can see myself in both the Indian and the Chinese in the Peters routine. And then the same hand gesture that's understood differently in Italy and in India.

I know so many stories like that, where an American thought they were doing or saying something in another country and it was interpreted completely differently. There's one I heard about an American woman in Brazil who went into a restaurant and put her purse under that table which was a signal that she's a prostitute.

We do have cultural and language differences, and they do lead to misunderstandings.

A friend of mine from New York told me a story about a woman who went into an Italian deli in New York and instead of ordering calzone (like a rolled pizza) she order coglione (cajones in Spanish. It's something men have) and the deli guys kept making her repeat it, and laughing till they cried, and calling in more people to hear her say it.

In Italy they used to keep asking me where I'm from and I'd say Chicago (in my defense I do pronouce it she-caggo) but they wanted to make it be chee-cago which wasn't very nice. Ci cago. But I get that it was funny.

The standup of Peters reminds me of Seinfeld, who shows people's little foibles. Well, I used to like that show, but since Kramer had that public meltdown, I can't watch him any more.

That U-tube video is right on Dancer.

"WE ONLY GOT ONE WORLD. WHERE IS THE LOVE?"

If dancer you don't laugh at even culturally based jokes about Italians when you are among ONLY Italians, then your world is different from mine.

I have no idea amongst those of Italian descent. But since the Chinese are highly diverse group world-wide (even if they all have black hair without the colour dye and they all look alike to some folks who don't socialize with Asians.... Hope you got the in-joke on this one, folks. ;)) depending which country the person is born, which region of China their ancestors may be from, which historic era they are familiar with (pre-Communist, Communist, or post-Communist-pseudo-capitalist), AND if they can't even laugh if one of their own comedians makes culturally based jokes, then the world is indeed flatter, less 3D.

For Chinese born in North America, 2nd,3rd generations,etc. and very Westernized with their loss of Chinese language, there are jokes they make about themselves in relation to the Chinese in China/Tawain...because these 2 groups are TOTALLY different culturally.

Good culturally-based satire if done properly by the right person, has an underlying edge of empathy for those who may have been mocked/jeered/abused or oppressed in the past. But a highly astute comedian, will take that joke further and point to THEMSELVES their own ignorance/weakness/cultural tic. Then it becomes a better joke.

Yes, true since my partner is of German descent, and now that I've known him and his relatives, plus now having worked for a German-based firm for almost 3 years, absolutely yes, he and I have in-jokes about cultural SIMILARITIES or at least of traditional German and Chinese cultural extreme tendencies --stoic (Germans are abit less so than Chinese.), technically-oriented, etc.

Yes, I do listen to Keillor. Not really much choice about that around here.

When Fargo first came out I thought that I might find it insulting. But just one viewing of the girls in the bar having an entire conversation just saying the word, "ya" and I had to admit, that is exactly what we sound like at times.

As far as some people not being one bit racist, I guess it is possible. All I know is that I can be at times. I don't like it, but I do see it in me.

Yes, Orchid, my world is different than yours. In my family, there is no humor in Italian jokes and no, we dont' laugh, we think them ignorant.

It is how I feel when I hear the jokes and always have. It's a part of me to react to any racist joke with disdain and so I don't really like stand up comedy. I like irony, and I'm told I have a great sense of humor, but I am mucho senstive to racial jokes.

Today, in my email, I recieved two racist emails. Both were about Barak Obama. I can't imagine how my friends would find them funny, but I didn't like them and wrote back asking them to refrain from sending me any racial jokes. One was REALLY racist.

I don't get it, no I don't. Not in my crowd and with my Italian friends, we don't laugh at Italian jokes.

Our lives are different, yes.

Dancer

Thinking about it, Orchid, I think my family, the whole group of them, are too educated and have too much money to enjoy hearing their race bashed even in jest. They are quite snobs, neurosurgeons, attorneys, dancers with doctorates, etc..

They can afford to keep the junk away and they do.

I know I am more comfortable with my lifestyle and have no wish to learn to laugh at racial things. Now...racial traits, those are fine and can be funny.

I have never heard my Chinese friend, whom has been my friend since I was about 13 ever laugh at her race. Her family is proud too and keeps company with only those they choose to.

We are tennis playing, violin playing, finishing school women.
Different I guess.

Thank you for stating that and not bashing me for not getting it.

Dancer