Is this a racist joke?

[Howyoudoin]

I found this joke funny because it's obviously a play on words on the original Daniel De Foe story. But i'm sure there will be others who disagree and think i'm being racist somehow.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... tXf12AaVmv

The Russian text on the photo says "The person who got the best Black Friday deal was Robinson Crusoe . . ."

Funny or racist?

HYD

[UncleEbenezer]

The Russian text on the photo says "The person who got the best Black Friday deal was Robinson Crusoe . . ."

Funny or racist?

HYD

I'd call it funny.

The butt of the joke is "black friday". Is anyone offended[1] by taking the p*** out of such a daft ritual?

[1] Other than as a rhetorical device.

[GoSeigen]

The Russian text on the photo says "The person who got the best Black Friday deal was Robinson Crusoe . . ."

Funny or racist?

HYD

I'd call it funny.

The butt of the joke is "black friday". Is anyone offended[1] by taking the p*** out of such a daft ritual?

[1] Other than as a rhetorical device.

Jokes are not racist, people are.


GS

[Lanark]

If anything it is the term 'Black Friday' which is racist

Word Origin for 'Black Friday':
Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would Philly cops not be able to take the day off, but they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters would also take advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.

So as with other terms such as 'Black hat' and 'Blackballing' the colour black is taken to be synonymous with something bad = ergo racist

Now whether you consider 'Black Friday' sales as something positive or something negative will depend on whether you work in retail or not. Looking at the origin of the term it is clear it started out with negative connotations.

It will probably take another generation or two before these anachronistic terms fall out of use and get replaced with something more inclusive, but I think it will (and should) happen.

[Lootman]

So as with other terms such as 'Black hat' and 'Blackballing' the colour black is taken to be synonymous with something bad = ergo racist

It will probably take another generation or two before these anachronistic terms fall out of use and get replaced with something more inclusive, but I think it will (and should) happen.

So you predict that in 50 years we will not use words like "blackmail", "black ice" and "blacklisted"?

Sounds a bit too PC and over-sensitive to my mind.

[UncleEbenezer]

So as with other terms such as 'Black hat' and 'Blackballing' the colour black is taken to be synonymous with something bad = ergo racist

What utter tosh. The black there is the black of night. The black pit. The shadows where unknown terrors lurk. The black cloak of the assassin, the witch, the necromancer. To associate all that heritage with racism goes beyond Orwellian and into absurd caricature.

It will probably take another generation or two before these anachronistic terms fall out of use and get replaced with something more inclusive, but I think it will (and should) happen.

I expect you'd get a lot of resistance there from Africans. People from countries and cultures where christianity (whose heritage you seek to abolish) is much stronger than here, and Political Correctness much weaker.

[bungeejumper]

Oh dear, oh dear, what tangles we get ourselves into when one sector of society decides it can appropriate a word. In Bristol there's a contentiously named pub called the Black Boy Inn, which is on Black Boy Hill, just off Whiteladies Road, and it's been raising racially sensitive hackles for many decades now. It turns out, however,that the eponymous Black Boy was Charles II, who had a fine head of black hair and who did the country the favour of reopening all the pubs and theatres after Cromwell's era was safely in the past.

If you really want to cause offence inadvertently, try nitty gritty. Or Penny Lane. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nitty-gritty.html .

BJ

[Rhyd6]

Well I thought it was funny

R6

[nimnarb]

Another stupid event now popularised in the UK. If you can't beat them join them..........uugh.

[swill453]

Oh dear, oh dear, what tangles we get ourselves into when one sector of society decides it can appropriate a word. In Bristol there's a contentiously named pub called the Black Boy Inn

We can beat that, we've got a pub called the Black Bitch.

Named for a dog, of course. A black greyhound from a local legend.

Scott.

[Gengulphus]

So you predict that in 50 years we will not use words like "blackmail", "black ice" and "blacklisted"?

Well, I do predict pretty confidently that I and quite a few others of us won't! ;-)

And there's the disturbing possibility that one's accounts being 'in the black' will no longer be regarded as a good thing...

Gengulphus

[melonfool]

The link in the OP doesn't go anywhere so I assume Facebook removed it. Can't imagine why, it's clearly hilarious.....[not].

Mel

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Strictly speaking, "Man Friday" of Robinson Crusoe fame does have slavery / subservience connotations.

So perhaps some may take offence....re. cotton plantations etc.

And the dude in the piccie does seem to be bowing down in awe of the White Guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_%2 ... _Crusoe%29

It appears that notions of servitude do not transcend those of skin colour.

So whilst I despise "political correctness gone wild", this "joke" could justifiably offend some, just forgetting about the word "Black" and focussing on what "Man Friday" symbolised.

Just my opinion
Matt

[UncleEbenezer]

So whilst I despise "political correctness gone wild", this "joke" could justifiably offend some, just forgetting about the word "Black" and focussing on what "Man Friday" symbolised.
Matt

It was of its time. A time when personal servitude was still usual, much of the world looked up to white people, and notions of a grey area were different to today. But look at the relationship: if Defoe's story is about slavery then so is P G Wodehouse, and noone suggests references to Jeeves are offensive.

Whereas "black friday" is very much of our time. And symbolises a rather ugly aspect of it. Ugly aspects of our own society are absolutely fair game for jokes.

I thought the word play was rather apt. All the more impressive if it came from someone who wasn't a native speaker of the language.

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

So whilst I despise "political correctness gone wild", this "joke" could justifiably offend some, just forgetting about the word "Black" and focussing on what "Man Friday" symbolised.
Matt

It was of its time. A time when personal servitude was still usual, much of the world looked up to white people, and notions of a grey area were different to today. But look at the relationship: if Defoe's story is about slavery then so is P G Wodehouse, and noone suggests references to Jeeves are offensive.

Correct me, if I'm wrong....I've not read P G Wodehouse, but wasn't the character Jeeves actually a paid servant?

I'm not wanting to pick a fight as such, to someone whose great-great-great-grandfather (or whatever fairly recent ancestor) was actually a slave in the US, then I can quite appreciate that offence may genuinely may felt - even now.

[UncleEbenezer]

Correct me, if I'm wrong....I've not read P G Wodehouse, but wasn't the character Jeeves actually a paid servant?

The matter is never mentioned. It would be quite out of place and out of character for anyone in that society to talk about it. One would presume so, because the society it's set in - unlike a "desert island" - was one based on money.

My point was that to Wodehouse's characters, the master-servant relationship was absolutely the natural order of things. Noone thought to question it. Wodehouse's upper-class buffoons were as entitled to their servants as we are to, say, our electricity supply.

[Lootman]

So whilst I despise "political correctness gone wild", this "joke" could justifiably offend some, just forgetting about the word "Black" and focussing on what "Man Friday" symbolised.
Matt

It was of its time. A time when personal servitude was still usual, much of the world looked up to white people, and notions of a grey area were different to today. But look at the relationship: if Defoe's story is about slavery then so is P G Wodehouse, and noone suggests references to Jeeves are offensive.

I'm not wanting to pick a fight as such, to someone whose great-great-great-grandfather (or whatever fairly recent ancestor) was actually a slave in the US, then I can quite appreciate that offence may genuinely may felt - even now.

For me the test is not whether someone is actually offended, but whether they reasonably should have been. Some people might be very sensitive to certain words, even innocuous ones, and there should surely be a limit to how much we should have to dance around such over-sensitivities.

So when people claim that political correctness has gone overboard, it is often when someone almost seems to be trying too hard to find offence, such as with any use of the word "black". Then there is pushback and rightly so.

The other point, as Uncle says, is that one has to take into account the period in history. It can be a big mistake to assess the actions of one era by the moral standards of another. No matter how repugnant slavery is regarded now, it was a conventional norm a few hundred years ago, and few of us would have given it much thought had we lived at that time. Some did, of course, but most did not.

America is a country that struggles with this more than most, And that is despite the fact that there are few people alive today who remember segregation as an adult, and probably none who had a grandparent who was a slave. None of that changes what happened, but at some point we have to move beyond it, and certainly not wallow in it or "play a race card".

[stevensfo]

No matter how repugnant slavery is regarded now, it was a conventional norm a few hundred years ago, and few of us would have given it much thought had we lived at that time. Some did, of course, but most did not.

Not forgetting that the European to West Indies Slave trade simply used the same practices established by the Muslim Slave trade that operated all over the Med and around Africa long before. There was a great exhibition on Gozo and Malta that was so graphic that they had to remove some paintings. Arab slave traders went along the French, Italian and Spanish coasts, taking slaves, mainly children.

Go to Tanzania and there are stories of British people trying to stop Arabs from taking slaves back to the Middle East as late as the 1920s. The Muslim Slave traders were mostly interested in children. I think that Zanzibar was controlled by the Arabs for a few hundred years.

Last year we spent three days in Muscat. They told us that they had only made slavery illegal in the 70s, Saudi Arabia in the 60s, all due to pressure from the UK.

If anyone cares to look at the anti-slavery movements in the UK starting in the 1700s I think we should be quite proud.

Steve

PS Just imagine if the French or Spanish had been in control.

[scotia]

If anyone cares to look at the anti-slavery movements in the UK starting in the 1700s I think we should be quite proud.

In the 17th and 18th centuries coal miners in Scotland were treated as slaves
http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/429.html

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

For me the test is not whether someone is actually offended....."play a race card".

You see, for me, I don't really see "Black Friday" in the light of the OP, as having anything to do with a "race card". It's really a "what's your view on slavery mate card" issue to me.

And as for whether people should just forget the past, and let bygones be bygones, of course - eventually. But you only have to cast your mind back to the very recent past e.g.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/20/us/u ... index.html

to people pulling down statues of civil war heroes, to realise how raw the wounds still are.

Matt