Yeah, we’ve all heard that. You express discomfort over something someone has said, a slur, a racist joke, a homophobic comment, and it’s all turned around on you for being offended, for being uncomfortable, for being upset about it. After all, you’re not one of them, why should you be upset? We’re just joking, right. Just a joke.
Well, I’m starting to think that “Just a joke” might be one of the most dangerous phrases in our lexicon right now.
I’m from New Jersey, so the suicide of Tyler Clementi is close to home for me. Literally, actually. It’s on all the local channels, in the local papers, all the appropriate outrage is being felt, all the Rutgers students are wearing black, signing condolence books, and this is fine. It’s great. But how many of those kids are going to go home and laugh when their roommate/friend/sibling/etc. makes a gay joke? A joke about black people? A joke about women? I’m betting a pretty good amount. But why should I care?. They’re just kidding around. No harm, right? It has nothing to do with what happened to Tyler. Tyler killed himself because Dharun Ravi, his roommate, turned on his webcam and broadcast Tyler engaging in a sexual act with another man. That’s way more serious than a harmless joke among friends, right?
Sure. Keep telling yourself that.
Because you know what? Those jokes make it all right. They normalize hate, and bigotry, and fear, and bullying. If you’re laughing, you’re not racist/homophobic/sexist, right? It’s all in fun! No one really means it, after all. Right. Joking in this way makes it “okay,” and for those who say it’s not okay, this culture causes them to feel like they are the ones who are out of line. “Come on, it’s just a joke! don’t take it so seriously!” And then the joke keeps growing, becoming more and more okay, more and more normalized, more and more a part of average discourse, until you say it to or around or about someone who is on the edge, and it pushes them off. And then that poor kid, that poor person who maybe has been a joke for as long as they can remember, who maybe can’t take it anymore, becomes the one who was being “too sensitive,” who took it “too far,” who must have had “other problems.”
Because, after all, it’s “just a joke.” And so it continues.
Those jokes have created an atmosphere that allowed Dharun and his ‘accomplice,’ Molly Wei,…two apparently well-educated, intelligent, and normally well-behaved teenagers… to feel like there was absolutely nothing wrong with making fun of Tyler’s sexual orientation and posting both the teasing and the video of Tyler’s private affairs online. After all, to read Dharun’s Twitter, it’s almost seemed like it was just joke to him. It is a joke.
Just a joke, right?
How many more kids have to kill themselves before this stops being funny?
-Lindsay (guest poster)
