Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
It is still perfectly acceptable to caricaturize and mock (for the sake of joking and not to be offensive) any culture, country, people, etc. that's not your own. It's so funny to see all the "white & European" red-sunburnt tourists at the beaches here  And the French can't pronounce the R's, the English are always drunk, the Germans are square-headed... If we can laugh at other Europeans, I don't see why we can't laugh at Africans, Asians, Americans, etc. |
There's a difference between "laugh at" and "imply that they're funny because they're not really human," which was the tone of much of the pre-civil-rights-era caricatures.
All mocking is intended to be offensive; that's how the humor of "mocking" works. In "friendly" mocking, the humor is supposed to carry the additional message, "we all know this is an exaggeration or an outright lie," but there's still an offensive statement at the core. The issue is whether the offensive statement is
hurtful as well as shocking and rude.
Among other issues, there's a substantial difference between mocking the people in power, and the people living under oppression.