Mad Atoms

Once during a Thanksgiving when I was a wee lad, I was cracking and eating some nuts from my grandparents’ assorted nuts tray. (Why do only old people have these? They're kinda awesome.) I had dug out some Brazil nuts, my favorite, when one of my uncles decided to share with me, "You know, when I was a kid we used to call those n****r toes." Then he laughed hilariously while I stared blankly at him. 

Recently I shared this anecdote at a party - as I find it both creepy and humorous - when one of my friends said, "Isn't it kinda ridiculous that people can't say stuff like that anymore without people thinking they’re racist?" Everyone in the group was fairly inebriated - in the rant-prone Philosopher Stage of drunkenness - but I was still a little surprised by how much agreement there was in the room. A long, sloppy debate ensued.  

The main crux of the matter was about what constitutes being “racist.” For example, does not being attracted to members of a particular ethnicity make you racist against them?  

I make no claims to have wisdom about race relations. However, I can say that our race debate was pretty transparently about a much sillier and simpler issue: people like racist jokes, but don’t like being called racist. Oh no, white person dilemma! 

Just tell a racist joke at a party (full of white people of course, don't get yourself killed). I bet instead of people being offended, everyone will come out of the woodwork with their favorite racist joke. You'll also get the same effect with dead baby jokes. Hipsters are the worst hypocritical offenders in this regard. Despite spending all their time ranting about evil intolerant Conservatives, they usually know a craaaaazy number of racist or anti-Semitic jokes. Hipster girls are particularly humorous, because they’ll always preface their racist joke with, “Okay, now I am not racist at all…” Like that then allows them to say whatever offenses they can think of.  

Does finding a racist joke funny make you racist? My uncle and the “n****r toes.” That’s not really funny. So racist, right? What if the joke is really clever though? Still racist? I laugh at jokes about people dying. That doesn’t mean I actually think people dying is funny. Is that even equitable? Are hipsters off the hook? 

Or do we all have to fess up to being a little bit racist?