Unforgivable

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0dJu1Jj7VTw

Racist humor is obviously a very sticky subject; slurs are emphasized and stereotypes are perpetuated. In this video, a black man is acting out a stereotype that he obviously isn’t a part of. He laughs numerous times during the recording, indicating that he, as a black man, is finding humor in the stereotype itself. This is a very hard thing to understand, especially because the video is incredibly graphic and offensive. He doesn’t simply say the “N Word” a few times… he says it every other sentence it seems. Stealing things, disrespecting women, having an unwanted pregnancy, and the apparent popularity of chicken are brought up to illustrate the stereotype of the black people that the man is trying to get across.
Why would this man put every possible aspect of the African American stereotype into a video, and then laugh at it as a black man himself? The reasons are limited because his actions contrast dramatically with the efforts of many other African Americans to eradicate this stereotype. A possible explanation for this is that the man is poking fun at how ridiculous, unfair, and unreal that the stereotype about their people that other races have created. The likelihood of there being an actual person who embodies all these horrible attributes, including stealing pants, condescending upon and raping women, being jealous of all other black men, demanding free food at restaurants, and being involved in random pregnancies, is fairly slim. If there was indeed a message in this video, it was that the current stereotype of African Americans has evolved into something so unrealistic that no human being could possibly be all of the things involved with that stereotype.
It’s interesting to look at the comments left by YouTube users who have watched this video. A large majority of the responses are positive. They praise the man in the video for being “so funny” and they follow up with a smiley face. I can see why this video is funny, however; it circulated among my group of friends for about four months. It was all the rave and people quoted from it every chance they had.
In our day and age (especially in our generation) racism is not as prominent as it once was. White people realize that stereotypes about black people are ridiculous and exaggerated, and we can poke fun at our culture for having let such a thing evolve. We laugh and think, “Yea, that is a pretty ridiculous stereotype”.
I can imagine that there would be a lot of African Americans who would find this video disgusting. His actions portray everything that African Americans deem untrue or unfair; there’s no way that they would approve of someone reintroducing this kind of stereotype into a culture, especially after so much has been done to fight against it.
Both sides of the story make sense to me. The man in the video is using irony and sarcasm very well in order to get his point across, and a lot of people understand that and take it with a grain of salt (ex: all of my friends who laughed at this video and practically lived their lives by it). However, I can also see why the video would cause anger and disgust. But, as we’ve mentioned before, humor is a double-edged sword, and whether or not someone finds this humorous really depends upon their own background and culture.