“How to respond to a racist joke”
I was just visiting Digg and the first story on their front page had this title “How to respond to a racist joke“.
Without reading anything beyond that or clicking that link, the first thing that popped into my mind was: “erm, laugh?”.
Come on people. While there are a lot of racist jokes out there, only a very small percentage are meant with ill purpose. Most of them are just genuinely funny. So, just freaking laugh. There is no “special pre-calculated response” you need to have to a ‘racist’ joke, even if the joke is all about your own race/nation. By laughing with it is the only way you can make things better, not worse. What are people made up these days from? Melting sugar?
Jeez.
Update: Read the comments for some more explanation.
BTW, personally, I am more of a prank person rather than a sick-joke person. For example, last year, I had our neighbor of our Greek home on IM and at the same time I was speaking to my mother on the phone who she was sitting at her patio. I could tell her everything she was doing, and she couldn’t understand how this was possible. She was astonished. I kept telling her “I see you via satellite” and she believed it. She kept looking at the sky! Little did she know of the neighbor.