I'm going to start today off with a set of websites. You may notice a theme as you check them out.
Did you figure it out? If you happen to be incredibly dimwitted (e.g. a blonde haha), those jokes tend to elicit one of two reactions from the general population. Either the reader will find them extremely hilarious or extremely hilarious. It is very rare that you find people in the dead center between the two. But however offensive they are, you must admit that some are pretty funny. If nothing else, the last one is wonderful.
I have taken enough time to listen to several complaints about how insensitive these jokes are. I have listened to complaints about how incredibly uneducated the people who come up with these jokes are. I've listened to complaints about how we are all equal. ACHOO!!!
I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but we are not all equal. If we were, these kind of jokes would not persist, because they would not be considered funny. If you need more proof that we aren't all equal, consider this. When a black person says something offensive about white people, it's funny. When a white person says something offensive about black people, it's crude. Need more? There is a fraternity on my campus of Hispanic engineers here on campus. Could you safely find a fraternity of white engineers? Need more? The thing that set Barack Obama apart in the last election was that he was black. The thing that set Sarah Palin apart was that she was a woman. Had they been white men, they would never have gotten as far as they did.
Why do I bring all of this up?
Most of the people who complain about these jokes generally complain on behalf of one of two schools of thought. The first is that they believe these jokes are simply wrong because "we are all equal". I'm pretty sure I just killed that argument. The other is that they believe these jokes are causing stereotypes to persist. I'm sorry to tell you that this argument is wrong as well.
I have said before that stereotypes exist for a reason. Stereotypes do not exist because of these jokes. These jokes exist because of stereotypes. These jokes are not the cause of prejudice. Prejudice is the cause for these jokes.
When you have are sick, do you quit having a fever so you'll get better? If you have allergies, do you quite sneezing so the allergies will go away? When you have a sunburn, do you get a spray-on tan to reverse the damage to your skin? If there are people out there that do, I may have a topic for another day.
Prejudice is the same way. You are not going to cure the disease by fighting the symptoms.
So how can you cure prejudice?
I'm sorry to tell you that you will not live to see the day that any prejudice comes to an end. At least not any prejudices that you know about. A prejudice simply cannot persist as long as people know about it. Prejudice is like a cancer. You have to eliminate ALL of the infected cells, or it will come back. That means if you acknowledge any kind of truth to any stereotype, you must die before the prejudice can die.
It's sad, I know. But it's the truth.
Other than dying, is there anything you can do? Sure. You can fight the disease at the source to make sure that there are less "infected" people in the future. You can eliminate the truth of these stereotypes. Unfortunately, this won't happen until you quit drawing attention to the problem. Every time you do something to actively fight a stereotype (e.g. protests, arguing, propaganda), you draw attention to it and show someone the light that is the grain of truth within that stereotype.
So how do you actually fight this disease? You cannot do it actively or aggressively or you will make it angry and inflamed. You can, however, fight it passively by not letting stereotypes define you. It's an anticlimactic solution, but it's the only one that will work.
In summary: don't draw attention to stereotypes, then die.
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