>> All that said, I'd consider =A0any cross-race and cross-culture joke on >> it's merits. Some may well pass the test of reasonableness (mine >> anyway) regardless of their PC rating. > So it's a slur if you don't think it's funny, otherwise it's a joke? > How about if half the audience thought it was funny and half thought it > was a slur? > > Maybe you thought it was a funny enough to be OK, making fun of Chinese. > Ha ha. Let's ask if he minded the joke we made of him. See, he doesn't > mind, right? One of use may need some more sleep - may be me :-). I didn't comment on any joke made here. AFAIR none were funny enough to be noticed, whether slurs or not. I'm not a consumate joke teller or requrgitator. I save and savour a few and seldom tell jokes. I think I think that if I ran into a joke that I thought was extremely funny and may be worth retelling AND it contained racial references that I'd then look at those to see if they, as a first measure, passed a good cross section of the criteria in my basic hurdle test. [[ Hear O' Israel, the L... and thy neighbour as thyself. // "A certain man .... Jericho ... which of these was neighbour to that man ? // Do not place a stumbling block ... blind ... // ]]. If it seemed OK in those terms I'd probably have a quick glance at the special circumstances // overly sensitive / ... issues and make a decision. NONE of the foregoing may necessarily be a formal test - may just be a "does it fit what I consider is apposite in these terms ?" measure BUT a formal test may apply. Some of the few jokes that I know that I consider clever and worth retelling are on permanent embargo because I also consider them too offensive for whatever reason in a world of too sensitive people. I now can't think of a single worthwhile joke as an example :-). Some will = come. A racist joke heard in childhood just surfaced. Useful only when inverted to present to racists :-). OK - childhoodish' joke' from another era. Not funny. Hardly worth telling. But perhaps an example of one that I don't have too much trouble with. Insert race of choice - this is how it came. Q: "What do you call a 6 foot 6 inch Biafran with a machine gun?" A: (of course) "Sir !!!" Apart from not being funny and representing children's humor probably thousands of years old, I don't see too much wrong with it. At the time there were a lot of machine gun toting Biafrans in the news. I prefer eg "There are 10 sorts of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't". But I can't seem to work any racial content into that. FWIW - I have made a successful Chinese joke in Chinese ;-). I know because some Chinese friends used my 'joke' as an example when explaining another one. It's trivially simple and silly. But for some reason seems to not occur to people in China to the extent that they consider it quite humorous. In a group you'll often have a Mr Yuan. Simply refer to him as Mr RMB (ar em bee) and you'll find the name is liable to still be being used months later and adopted by the target as well. FWIW. R > > At what ratio does it become a joke that isn't a slur? > > Bob > > > -- > http://www.fastmail.fm - The way an email service should be > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .