Multiculturalism and Humor

Year 1995, Issue: 2, 3 - 12, 01.10.1995

David Espey

Abstract

Ethnic humor in America has traditionally been prejudiced and racist. Jokes about ethnic difference are as American as apple pie. Each immigrant group in the US has suffered ridicule from other groups who got there first. Thus in American culture there exists a whole catalog of ethnic jokes based on crude stereotypes identified by names which in themselves are ethnic slurs--the Mick joke, the Kraut joke, the Chink joke, the Jap joke, Polack joke--as well as jokes about Italians, Jews, Hispanics, Indians, Blacks. In the current climate of heightened sensitivity to cultural difference in America, this low form of humor is unacceptable in public. Senator Alphonse D'Amato of New York himself an Italian-American was reminded of that fact recently when he had to apologize publicly for making ethnic jokes about Judge Lance Ito, the Japanese-American magistrate presiding in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

References

• Deloria, Vine Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins. New York: MacMillan, 1969.
• Hughes, Langston, ed. The Book of Negro Humor. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966.
• Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression. Trans. Marjorie Kerr Willison. New York: Harcourt, 1963.
• Rich, Frank. The New York Times 13 March 1994: IV, 17.
• Watkins, Mel. On the Real Side. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.