A Note on Why Racism and Sexism Make for Tasteless Humor
Q: Is Google male or female?
A: Female, because it doesn’t let you finish a sentence before making a suggestion.
The above joke is an example of disparagement humor — humor that denigrates a particular race or social group in society. Such jokes are commonplace in the modern world of comedy. Such humor, though, has a two-fold effect. Not only is the targeted group being discriminated against, but the joke also encourages and promotes a feeling of, “it’s just a joke, I didn’t mean it.” In other words, by conveying the discriminatory attitude through a ‘benign’ joke, such feelings and attitudes get proliferated and result in further discriminatory behavior towards the targeted group(s).
A lot of work towards disparagement humor and attitudes towards prejudice has been done in the field of social psychology by T.E. Ford and Christian S. Crandall. This post will briefly elaborate on T.E. Ford’s work and offer my perspective towards the end.
T.E. Ford proposed a prejudiced norm theory. His theory proposes that people who hold a prejudiced belief will not express this opinion or belief of theirs, unless the context of a situation makes it favorable to do so (like for example, when that particular person is surrounded by people who hold similar beliefs) (Ford et al, 2004). T.E. Ford’s theory thus theorizes that a discriminatory or prejudiced joke makes the context of a situation favorable for the expression and conduction of further discriminatory behavior.
For instance, in studies conducted by Ford in 2004, men higher in hostile sexism — antagonism against women — reported greater tolerance of gender harassment in the workplace upon exposure to sexist versus neutral (nonsexist) jokes. Men higher in hostile sexism also recommended greater funding cuts to a women’s organization at their university after watching sexist versus neutral comedy skits (Ford et al, 2004).
How did sexist humor make the sexist men in these studies feel freer to express their sexist attitudes? Imagine that the social norms about acceptable and unacceptable ways of treating women are represented by a rubber band. Everything on the inside of the rubber band is socially acceptable; everything on the outside is unacceptable.
Sexist humor stretched the rubber band; it expanded the bounds of acceptable behavior to include responses that would otherwise be considered wrong or inappropriate. So, in this context of expanded acceptability, sexist men felt free to express their antagonism without the risk of violating social norms and facing disapproval from others. Sexist humor signaled that it’s safe to express sexist attitudes.
So in this constantly shifting platform of prejudiced beliefs, one that depends on the context of the situation, disparagement humor fosters discrimination against social groups — like black Americans — that occupy this kind of shifting ground. However, this also means that disparagement humor might not have the same effect against two ‘justified prejudice’ groups: terrorists and racists. Social norms might be such that people don’t need to wait for jokes to justify expressions of prejudice against these groups. This still doesn’t mean, however, that such jokes can be justified. Violence can be spread in many forms, and countering violence of one form with another (disparaging and discriminatory humor) isn’t the solution.
An important implication of these findings is that disparagement humor can be more or less detrimental based on the social position occupied by the targeted groups. Movies, television programs or comedy clips that humorously disparage groups such as homosexuals, Muslims or women can potentially foster discrimination and social injustice. On the basis of these findings, one might conclude that disparagement humor targeting oppressed or disadvantaged groups is inherently destructive and thus should be censured. However, the real problem might not be with the humor itself but rather with an audience’s dismissive viewpoint that ‘a joke is just a joke,’ even if disparaging. For people holding prejudiced beliefs, such a viewpoint trivializes the history of oppressed peoples and can further accentuate their discriminatory attitude.
Finally, even ironic discriminatory humor that is intended to shine light on the oppression faced by groups and cultures, i.e. subversive discriminatory humor, can be misinterpreted by some to be the accepted mode of conduct with respect to the targeted group (Ford et al, 2004). This can be brought about when the audience does not understand the person intending to subvert the very same prejudice that is in fact being propagated via the disparaging humor.
Psychological research thus finds that racist, sexist and disparaging humor of other kinds can’t be taken ‘just like a joke.’ Such attitudes propagate further discriminatory behavior by prejudiced individuals and don’t make for a tasty course of comedy, laughs and humor. Now we know what happens when such jokes are made, and we hope this short post serves as a strong call against such humor.
For those that are interested, here is T.E. Ford’s paper which served as my source for this post. Further reading by Christian S. Crandall, Amy Eshleman and Laurie O’Brien on the prevalence of social norms as a leading cause of prejudiced behavior is also recommended.
