Ethnic humor can sometimes be taken to the extreme. I agree that if your willing to go to a comedy show then you shouldn't be offended from the material because it's all in harmless fun. However i can also see how sometimes the vocabulary and delivery can come off in an offensive way. I think it's important to be able to engage in this humor when it involves any race and be able to laugh about it. Cultural competence definitely comes into play with this because even when you are without members of your race, you should be able to have the skill set to engage with other cultures. If you aren't aware of your cultural bias then becomes difficult to effectively engage with out members from your group. I went to a high school that was dominantly Caucasians. Me being an African American in the suburban town i grew up in, i was used to being out numbered. There was an incident in our school where a Caucasian female wrote a blog on myspace about the "n word" and how she didn't see why it was such a big deal. She used the word various times in the blog and things got ugly. It was all over the news and she was suspended for the time being. My friends of course turned to me to catch my perspective and i told them i was completely offended, especially since i was friends with the girl who wrote the blog. They seemed kind of caught off guard at my response and it took me a while to understand their shock. Me being an African American it would only make sense that i would be offended by this, however since most of my high school friends were white they almost didn't see me as being African American. Even though they were aware of the cultural difference, they didn't apply the knowledge to see the feelings of the situation to my group as a culture. Even though i lived in a white community and went to a predominately white school, i still am an African American as well as my family, therefore making us the out group.
Media portrays marginalized groups through representations that we then learn from. When we see a positive experience and then our behavior is altered, we can carry it over to our real life interactions with people. However this shouldn't derail from what it actually the reality of that group.
I too went to a high school that was predominantly Caucasians. It wasn't uncommon for me to hear remarks about African Americans that they were "not really black" or were "white blacks". I now feel those comments were made in regards to those African Americans character and their class. For students to be shocked by you being offended by that ignorant blog post is almost funny to me. I just feel they looked at your character and class differently than what the media has portrayed to them about the African American culture.
ReplyDeleteI agree depending on the setting and context, jokes about different cultures are just that, they're jokes. it's important we as a society, look at these jokes laugh at them and leave all issues there. It does however because an issue when people carry over media portrayals into their personal lives, just as your friends had done to you.