The Black History Museum

The New Yorker made a joke about Michelle and Barack Obama which backfired. The question which now matters is: is it possible to make a funny joke about them (at least in public)? Here are a few impolitic thoughts about black humour, by Richard D North.

I think the New Yorker was being deeply self-aware and aware when it made its joke. I doubt it will say so in public but I imagine this joke was intended to remind people that the last fuss about this sort of joke ocurred when the Muslim world largely lost its sense of humour when some Danes tried to send up terrorists. Geddit?   

I am not at all sure that it is possible to make a good joke which is not in bad taste. Almost inevitably, a joke will be picking on someone’s weaknesses. Quite often it will pick on the weaknesses a person is thought to have by being the member of some group or other. Of course, one can make wry and ironic jokes: that is, one can make a joke pretending to believe that a person has a weakness widely (but wrongly) thought to pertain to a certain group.

In short, one can be wry, ironic - and post-modern.

Thus, the New Yorker ran a cover which at first sight implied that it believed that Mrs Obama was a 1960’s black radical and that Barack was a Muslim extremist. Then  - one was supposed to spot - it was obvious that the nice and liberal New Yorker could not possible mean that. The cover was a joke at the expense of anyone stupid enough to believe or pretend to believe that the Obamas could be like that. (The joke was doubly tart in that Mrs Clinton’s campaign is believed to have deployed such games.)

The thing went from bad to worse. As Christopher Caldwell pointed out in his Financial Times column, John McCain (Obama’s main political opponent, at least outside the Democratic party) joined the chorus of disapproval. Caldwell is quite right, this was perhaps a Machiavellian move. After all, “The cartoon is offensive only to the extent that it is thought plausible”. When McCain deplores the cartoon he is saying one obvious thing but may be saying lots of less obvious things.

Of course, there is a very serious issue here and it is one less discussed. That is, are there any jokes about black people which can be funny and made in public? The answer is too often no. At least, you’d have to be very sure that the joke wasn’t funny simply because the person joked-about was black.

You can make Polish, Irish and Scottish jokes fairly easily (though you might want to watch your back). You’d better be very secure of your ground if you want to make Jewish jokes, or be Jewish (and then your jokes can be in the worst possible taste). But you’d better be careful with black jokes, with the exception of cannibal jokes, which are a tad easier.

It’s worth saying that this is very bad news for blacks. You may think that we should avoid black jokes because blacks have suffered and one shouldn’t make jokes about that. But the real reason why we have to avoid black jokes is that all the stereotypes of blackness are not just about failings (all jokes are about those) but about very serious failings. So when you make jokes, which are inevitably about types, you are likely to be reminding people that black people are thought to be criminal and violent. Car theiving and drugdealing feature heavily in the samizdat of black jokes. That and rough sex.

The truth is that this situation will change only when there are other more positive black stereotypes to build on.  

There is a further problem. This is that we have not yet acquired the ability to see the person beneath the black skin. I mean that both black and white people are very unsure that a joke about any particular black person is about that individual, or about blackness.

It is a very complicated business to work out what would be the shrewdest response to the New Yorker cartoon. But it is very tempting from my own comfortably white and British perspective to say that one plausible response would be to be glad that the New Yorker risked treating the Obama’s as being available for the routine risk of knockabout humour. 

But that gets you into some further difficult territory. Barack Obama may become incredibly important because in time we stop seeing him as black. This is a difficult business: he may get elected because he is black, and he may fail to get elected because he is black. For now then, he is importantly a highly symbolic black person. But we may - with a huge dose of luck - get to admire him (or even fail to admire him) for what he is as a person. He may also become amongst the first black people we can make jokes about as an individual.   

In the meantime, it takes courage to make jokes about black people, and it shouldn’t.