Jokes We Can No Longer Tell ?

[Khandro]

From 'Beyond The Fringe', which began in 1961 & has just been repeated on R4 in 'Behind Beyond the Fringe':

" I gather the negroes are sweeping the country" - " Yes it's the only job they can get" - "And very well they do it, too."

If it makes you smile today (it did me) are you a 'racist' ?

[Zacs-Master]

Probably.

[andy-hughes]

Khandro - Humour is spontaneous, as it should be, and if something makes you laugh, then so be it.

I listen back to people like Bernard Manning and others of his time, and I laugh til I hurt.

I do think I must be a horrible human being, but I still find their jokes funny, and of course, I am of that time, so i don;t get the shakes and the vapours like people a couple of generations further on may do.

Humour, like everything in life, is of its time, and what was considered appropriate then, may not be seen as appropriate now, but that does not mean it is no longer funny.

If it makes you laugh, then it is still funny, there is no escaping that simple fact.

I know I am not a racist, I don't need a lecture from some woke wonk telling me what to find funny - I can do that perfectly well on my own.

[andy-hughes]

What about this?

[Zacs-Master]

You’d really have to ask a lot of black people to know for sure, Khandro.

There seems to be a lot of ignorance about whether things are racist or not. There’s no one true answer. One black person may shake off the above joke, another may be mortally offended.

A white person can’t rationally or objectively judge whether the joke is racist as, quite simply, we’re not in a position to judge. Reading it did make me wince tho.

[barry1010]

I hear a lot of jokes on tv today that could never have been told on tv even 20 years ago - and yes, some of them are very funny. Some aren't but I'm sure others will disagree.

The joke in the OP is more a play on words than a poke at a race of people, in my opinion. Puts me in mind of another old gag, with the words misheard rather than misunderstood:

Two elderly ladies are having a natter as they walk to the shops.
"Windy, isn't it?"
"Never! I'm sure it's Thursday!"
"So am I, let's go in the café and have a cup of tea"

[Zacs-Master]

‘ The joke in the OP is more a play on words than a poke at a race of people’

You can surely see that the race of people it mentions could be offended by those words tho?

[nailedit]

Comedy is subjective.
My disabled nephew is currently in intensive care with liver and heart failure. During his life he was able to laugh at his situation.
I would make jokes about disabled people to him, and he would laugh.
He would make jokes about prisoners and psych patients and I would laugh.
Laughter is a coping mechanism for things which we find hard to deal with.
Once everyone goes 'woke' and PC and we cant make jokes anymore for fear of 'offending' then we are done for.

[nailedit]

Ive mentioned before, I had a black friend back
in my 20's.
We forever took the P out of each others colour.
(Zebra crossing..now you see me now you dont, depending on who was crossing...)
It was HUMOR, get over it.
Cant be doing with all this pc nonsense.

[Canary42]

I presume all of you who long for the amusements of older days would, given the opportunity, still queue up to watch the patients in a lunatic asylum (as the Victorians did).

[andy-hughes]

I don't 'long' for the past in any shape of form, but I do try to see all cultural history in its context, and that applies to humour as well.

There is nothing amusing about a psychiatric hospital, I know.

[nailedit]

Ridiculous comment Canary.

[nailedit]

Like Andy,
We have both been in a psych hospital.
Laughing AT psych patients is one thing.
Laughing ABOUT our conditions is another.

[Hopkirk]

That 'joke' should have been unacceptable then. Probably was to the majority.
It certainly doesn't make me smile.

[Atheist]

Some humour depends on making fun of, or insulting, people who differ from the joke teller. If the joke teller was the only non-gay man on the island, then his anti-gay jokes wouldn't really exist; they only work if the joke teller feels part of a comfortable majority who will join him in his having a go at the others.
I find it uncomfortable when someone addresses me as though he and I belong to the same 'gang' and would therefore agree with him and laugh at his sort of humour.
You see this sort of attitude on AB, when posters use acronyms or code-words, appearing to presume that such tricks excuse them from trying to discuss issues with respect for others.
If you and one other were on a desert island, would you get any satisfaction from making 'jokes' about the other's skin colour, sexual tastes, customs, etc? Without an approving audience from your gang, you wouldn't find it funny at all.

[douglas9401]

Putting the anal in analysis since 1955.

[andy-hughes]

JimF - // Does this make you smile too? //

No, but it was satire, and satire is not supposed to make you smile, it's supposed to make you think.

And it did.

The effortless skewering of racism with a background of jaunty blackface minstrels made its point even more real, because audiences were enthralled with The Black And White Minstrel Show, one of the very earliest BBC variety shows, and audiences of that time completely missing the offence of the concept.

It was groundbreaking, and although some people probably took it at face value, there is no doubt that the writers and performers knew they were breaking new ground in social comment, and using that most staid and supposedly moral organ of communication - The BBC - to do it.

[Khandro]

It was a clear fact then that negroes were NOT sweeping the streets, (I never saw anyone but white men doing that). The joke is surely a play on words between sweeping the streets & sweeping the country, thought it does touch on the nerve of the unease of the latter. So in fact it's stupid, honest, & brilliant all at the same time, i.e. real humour.
But we can't, so it seems, say it today?

[barry1010]

Zacs, of course I recognise that the word is particularly offensive. It's not a word I have ever used.

[Khandro]

Let this be recorded; for once I agree with Andy hughes !! //I listen back to people like Bernard Manning and others of his time, and I laugh til I hurt.//

I remember Bernard Manning saying;

'I once went to a Muslim strip-tease and the men were all shouting, "Show us your face!"'