Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
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.
|
This is a difference that a lot of people in this thread seem to be refusing to acknowledge. If they did... there would be little to argue about. After all, the issue is simple enough:
- Banning books that contain parts that are incidentally offensive by modern standards is wrong.
- Ignorant racists views expressed about certain ethnic groups are likewise wrong, and definitely have the potential to inflict psychological harm regardless of what the author's original intentions may have been.
I suspect what makes a lot of people fail to understand these rather simple points is due to the fact that the western world has no cherished classics (whether western or non-western in origin) that depict white people as subhuman, but is teeming with books that do the same to others.
Perhaps if high-school curriculums were full of books relating Native Americans' and Asians' early impressions about caucasians being a dirty and foul-smelling people (popular perceptions on those two fronts for a while, I believe), understanding what is wrong with books that depict blacks and others as subhuman animals or supporting clowns would not be so hard.
- Ahi