Is it "okay" to laugh?

With all this racism and stereotyping in media, when can you laugh without being racist? A better question is, what do you find funny? 

Is it only funny if nobody is offended? Let me tell you, almost everything offends somebody. If we only laughed at things that offended absolutely no one, we’d only laugh at a select few knock knock jokes and those YouTube videos of babies laughing. In all honesty, someone somewhere is probably offended by those too.

As I watch Day of Absence, I wonder: Should I be laughing? 

I find it extremely funny that there are black people dressed up as white people mimicking the distress that would occur if there were no black people. 

That’s hilarious. 

Then I ask myself: Why are they doing this? 

That’s not so funny. They’re using this type of humor because they’ve seen years upon years of white dominated media showing black people as simple, incompetent saps. 

That’s not so funny. 

Do I laugh? Well all I could manage was an uncomfortable chuckle. It’s comedy, it’s designed to make people laugh, but it’s also designed to make people think. It’s designed to make people realize the racial imbalance in media that resulted in mass stereotyping of several minorities. I can appreciate that, can applaud that, but can I laugh at it? 

Yes. Yes, I can. 

However, if I’m going to laugh at it, I should be able to justify why I’m laughing. I am laughing because of the irony of the situation. I’m laughing because a group is using a tool that other groups people have used to induce prejudice against them to explain how silly that idea is. 

It’s like I arranged the letters in my alphabet soup and explained how messages shouldn’t be sent through types of food. 

A bit of a stretch? Maybe, but Day of Absence used a form of theater to show how ridiculous it is to form stereotypes and judge people based theater and other types of media. If you can laugh at the irony and not the racism or the stereotypes being exhibited, I think you are in the clear. 

If you’re laughing because the black characters are lazy or because white people are incompetent, you might be someone’s racist grandpa (we’ve all been there). 

I think there’s also something to be said for laughing at stereotypes in which you are the butt of the joke. It’s sign of good character if you can laugh at yourself. When I’m watching a black comedian make fun of white people, I have every right to laugh. Provided that the jokes are funny and that there is no genuine hate or prejudice for either side. 

When all else fails, check the punch line and check the joke teller. Is there intolerance? Is there genuine prejudice between the two? Today, the case is typically a resounding ‘No’. When watching television, there is usually no genuine racism prejudice, at least as far as comedy goes. 

Nowadays, humor is screened like no other form of entertainment. It shouldn’t be prejudiced, it shouldn’t be in poor taste. I see a comedian of color on television, my experience has been that it’s usually safe to laugh. Comedians that typically make jokes involving race typically have no genuine hate and no genuine intolerance. 

When it comes to group of friends telling racy jokes, you’ll have to use your best judgement. Does the joke teller seriously disrespect or believe a stereotype of the group of people or ethnicity that the joke is about? If they do, you might want to find a new friends. 

I believe that’s it’s appropriate to laugh as long as you have respect for all of the groups of people involved and as long as the joke-teller shares those feelings. This mean would mean that open-minded and unbiased people have much more to laugh about than people who are racist or intolerant, which I would hope would be the case.