Back in Black

A friend of mine sent this joke out as a mass email the other day, much to my bewilderment. This friend, let's call him Kronos, never, and I mean never, does the mass email thing. He's not that type of guy. So, when he finally said to himself, "wow, here's a joke that just begs to be shared with every one I know", he probably should have thought about it for awhile before clicking the send button. Because what resulted was not very pretty.

When I opened my email and saw the picture, I immediately saw that it was racist and wondered why Kronos decided to send it to everyone. Though I felt the joke was racist, I don't for a second think Kronos is. I had to believe that he didn't see how the joke played off an awful stereotype of black people, that race didn't factor into it at all. So I let it go and left it at that.

A while later, I was talking with Spira about it (she received the email, too) and she felt the same as I did. She decided to give Kronos shit about it and sent off an email saying she couldn't believe he had the nerve to send everyone a blatantly racist joke and that she was offended. It was all true except the being offended part. Almost immediately afterward, Kronos issued an apology to everyone who received the joke. He stated that his intention was not to offend anyone and in hindsight, he could see why people would be offended by the joke. Kronos is for the most part a sweet and thoughtful guy, and this was in keeping with his character. Spira sent him a personal email explaining that she was just razzing him and she wasn't really offended. It looked like that would be the end of it. Then Karen came along.

Karen, a friend of Kronos' that Spira, nor practically anyone on the mailing list knows, sent her an expletive-ridden, abusive email, in response to her initial one. She told her to basically keep her mouth shut and stop making Kronos feel bad for wanting to make people laugh. She went on and on and on. I guess she was going for the "Shock and Awe" effect that our military pulled off with such brilliance at the onset of the Gulf War, Part II. Spira doesn't cotton much to being bullied, so she went tit for tat and let this woman Karen have it.

In addition to attacking Spira in a personal email, Karen issued a PG-13 rated one to the rest of us on the mailing list. In it she told "the haters" to "grow up and shut up" if we can't take a joke and " to get over ourselves". Basically, she was telling everyone, Bill O'reilly style, to keep silent unless we agree with her. Oh, and she also went on to say no one would be offended if the joke involved Betty and Kip choking on chardonnay at the country club. Uhhh, yeahhh...... Like Spira, I don't cotton much to being bullied, so I sent out an email of my own for all to read.

I let her know I felt the joke was racist, but that I didn't think Kronos was. I told her I agreed with her that there is such a thing as being too PC, but not in this instance. I ended by saying that if she couldn't see the distinction between the Sheniqua joke and the country club scenario, than she should sign up for a racial sensitivity course. She responded with her typical fury.

I'm not of a mind to recount the contents of all the emails that were sent back and forth, because there were a bunch more, all between Karen and me or Karen and Spira. And in between the cracks of these was Kronos sending out one or two sentence emails ordering the three of us to cease and desist. No one did. Another friend chimed in and shared Karen's view that we should lighten up. We all make fun of her husbands' accent (he's British), she wrote, and no one says that's racist. I had two thoughts when I read her email: 1. that everyone makes fun of his accent is news to me and 2. British=black? I could see where she was coming from, and that's what bothered me. I had entered the Bizzarro world.

Spira and I were the only ones who spoke out about the racist nature of the joke. I began to wonder if we were being overly PC and that maybe we should take everyone's advice and lighten up. As I said earlier, I wasn't offended by the joke. I thought it was obnoxious and ridiculous, but it didn't hurt me. And why would it? I'm not black. I didn't think it was appropriate, though, and shouldn't have been shared with a group of people. A friend pointed out to me that if someone on the list had received the joke at their work email, they could be in some serious trouble.

What bothered me most about the whole affair was the fact that no one seemed to notice that the joke was racially insensitive, and if they did, it didn't bother them. Luke Warm stopped over my house after things had cooled down and I showed him the chain of emails. Luke's one of the most liberal, inclusive people I know, and I thought if anyone would see the truth of the joke, it would be him. He didn't see it. Not at all. He thought it was just making fun of someone's accent. My jaw dropped. I explained to him that it was playing off an old sterotype of black people, but he couldn't see it. By his demeanor, I could tell that he was in agreement with the rest of them that I should lighten up.

Kronos sent out a final email saying how disappointed he was in Spira, Karen, and me. Up until that point, he had gotten off easy, in my estimation. Any one of us could have called him out as a racist if we had wanted to, but no one did. And here he was, saying he was disappointed in us? I couldn't let that rest, so I wrote him a message and so did Spira, both of us letting him know we weren't thrilled with his holier than thou shtick.

There's plenty more to this saga, but I don't have the energy to invest any more time in it. Maybe I'll repost some of the emails that went around, because some of them were hilarious.