Article June 12, 2000 Issue

Ethnic jokes are no laughing matter

By Don Leroy Griffith III

FOR MANY YEARS I enjoyed unflattering jokes and stories about people. Remarks about my own race, culture, or religion were even acceptable to me as long as they were told in the spirit of fun. I thought of them simply as humorous, and of myself as being open-minded for being able to laugh at myself.

Then one day, while reading the Bible account of the Apostle Peter's revelation that "God is no respecter of persons" (see Acts, chap. 10), the wrongness of what I was doing hit me like a ton of bricks! By reinforcing undesirable stereotypes about people, I was actually ignoring—or, even worse, denying—their identity as children of God.

I also had to admit that, even if a derogatory joke seemed funny to me, my actions were sanctioning, or perhaps even promoting, serious consequences—everything from verbal assaults to hate crimes. Such behavior doesn't just happen. Like embers stoked until they become flames, prejudices —racial, religious, gender, ethnic, cultural—grow out of negative feelings about another group that are reinforced bit by bit until they flare into action. Speaking—even joking—about any group of individuals as unattractive, stupid, godless, immoral, or dishonest only fuels the fire of hatred by justifying one group's dislike or disrespect for another.

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