Racist jokes draw the color line
For the most part, public and explicit expressions of extreme hate or animosity towards racialized groups of people are pretty easy to identify as wrong. Despite this, in certain spaces, the infamous ‘harmless racist joke’ persists because, as the defender says, it is not to be taken as a serious communication of ill-will.
Examples of these jokes can sound something like this (and I apologize for repeating them):
- “How was the Grand Canyon formed? A Jew dropped a penny down a manhole!”
- “How do you blind an Asian woman? Put a windshield in front of her!”
- “What’s the difference between a pizza and a Mexican? A pizza can feed four!”
Of course, the person delivering this joke loves to glamorize him/herself as a bold hero who is not afraid of “being offensive” and won’t let something silly like “political correctness” get in the way of his/her free speech. In this First Amendment martyr’s world, not only should it simply be legal to tell the racist joke, but it’s also a moral duty to do so. It’s only humor, after all. Read the rest of this entry »
In Syria, a number of sites like Facebook are blocked. The official reason has been security. The common response has been, “citizens’ rights are being violated.” Granted, it is easy enough to agree with the latter perspective: it is certainly more troublesome than it ought to be to access these sites, but more than a few of the Internet cafes I’ve come across in Damascus have found a way to get around the block. What I am interested in exploring, though, is the degree to which we can say that it is not actually a contradiction to believe in both the reason for the block, as well as the opposition to it. In other words, are state security and the liberal rights which justify the opposition to the block incompatible with one another, or do they in fact complement one another? It might appear here that I am trying to reconcile the two perspectives in order to find some imagined ‘happy balance’: in fact, I am only trying to show that they were never even separate in the first place to require reconciliation. Further, when I say that the first point should be “believed,” I am in fact not endorsing it, but only trying to make the point that there might be a connection between the “freedoms” we think we have in some places, and the extensiveness of “security” apparatuses in those places. 
Background: On Nov 13, 2008, three members of the Zionist Freedom Alliance, including current ASUC Senator John Moghtader, stormed up several flights of stairs in Eshleman Hall to confront three Palestinian students who silently held Palestinian flags on a balcony above a ZFA event to protest the group’s anti-Palestinian message. An altercation ensued in which the Palestinian students claim they were attacked by the ZFA members, and the ZFA members claim the opposite. UCPD recommended charges be filed against the ZFA members, but the DA did not press charges. Now the Zionist Organization of America intervenes, likely at the request of members of the ZFA or Tikvah.
