Nobody Can Take a Joke Anymore

[DanaC]

Is there a ready equivalent, in terms of tone and type of humour, about a white kid?

Genuine question. My first thought was that the reason it is a bit dodgy is that the focus is on the kid's blackness. Bear in mind there are two or three centuries in our history of cultural focus on the features of black faces and bodies as signifiers of both otherness and inferiority. One of the features that tended to be focused on and exaggerated in cartoons was big lips - another was the afro hair. We are used, as a culture, to viewing black bodies in a particular way and often that way is humorously.

At an individual level, the joke is not founded on any kind of racism and there is nothing inherently negative about it. It isn't hateful - it doesn't rely on any sense of cruelty or superiority. Our brains just go there - and we find it funny. But - it is a place we are culturally primed to go to. We notice the afro hair as a thing to focus on, because we are culturally primed to notice those features in a particular way.

[Lamplighter]

...At an individual level, the joke is not founded on any kind of racism
and there is nothing inherently negative about it....

Ummmm.... I think it depends on your POV.

I'm white, and so I don't have a direct connection with people telling me
my hair is funny or nappy or in some other sense "bad".

But over the years "hair" inside the American Black community has become a very important issue
... a "family value" to a point of being a source of embarrassment.

Hair straighteners, hair lighteners, special hair "do's" may be out of sight of the white community,
but from a very early age children are judged by Blacks on the texture of their hair.
Children, especially girls, with soft curls are often told they have "good" hair.
Others are told their hair is "hard"

As a Black child grows up with such comments, such remarks
can have an effect on how "jokes" about Black hair are perceived.
At each incidence then, that person must decide how to respond
...with laughter, silence, or anger.

.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

Simply take race out of the joke.

"How do you stop kids with curly hair from jumping up and down on the bed?"

"Put Velcro on the ceiling."

Not quite as funny, but, there ya go. It's a slippery slope.

Originally Posted by DanaC

Is there a ready equivalent, in terms of tone and type of humour, about a white kid?

Not for the Velcro joke. White kids can't jump.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

Not for the Velcro joke. White kids can't jump.

- well played

[xoxoxoBruce]

Here's one.

[Gravdigr]