That's only if you accept there's link between playful mocking and dehumanisation, which I don't.
I was talking to a lad from South Africa recently, goes in my local. There was some talk about some racist furore in the papers and he clarified this for me in a pretty decent way. He suggested that in the West we've become so far removed from racism that we don't know what it looks like any more. He said that when was growing up in a racist South Africa, he was encouraged not to shake hands with or touch black people because they had diseases and were violent animals. That his black housekeeper was not to be spoken to because she was black and blacks weren't people like us. That's what racism looks like. Putting on a crap accent for the purposes of comedy isn't it and has no link to it.
People talk about it like it's a spectrum of behaviour where this is on the "lower end" and the SA example is on the "higher end" but it's a false dichotomy. Mocking and hatred are not synonyms. Mocking is about noticing and highlighting the differences between different races or cultures for the purposes of humour. Hatred is believing that they aren't people.
It's like when people say that "white people have no rhythm compared to black people". That's broad strokes generally true. Noticing or highlighting differences isn't the act of hatred, it's a form of respect. You are different from me and I think some stuff you do is kitch or funny and you think some stuff I do is kitch or funny and together we can often highlight these in order to laugh at them. As I said earlier, perhaps growing up in a family that is half split in such different cultures has given me a different perspective on the issue.
This is one of the great hypocrisies of modern left wing thought. We'll all special and different yet all the same. We should celebrate our differences but not notice them. We should all love each other but hate our enemies. There's a ton of logical inconsistencies based on invented social contexts. Now usually I'd be respectful of that but my problem is that I don't see the driving force behind these things as empathy or concern for distress but instead as a form of authoritarian control. I genuinely don't think most people who bleat on about offensive speech actually care whether somebody is actually hurt and instead wish to shape an argument in a manner to which their point becomes more valid than others or their morality is seen as greater. Joe Biden is a fine example of such a thing in the US, David Lammy in the UK. These people remind me of those twats who used to grass you up for swearing in school so you'd get in trouble. They didn't give a shit about swearing, they just wanted to use a breach of social convention in order to get you into trouble because they are twats. They yielded speech like a weapon, a tool to assault others.
Authoritarian control of speech by creating new social norms and context is one of the last steps towards dictatorship of thought and banning of radicalism. I'd never support it.
Yeah, this is the shit right here! Glad we can come to an understanding. Thanks for typing out such a detailed and thorough (and personal) response. In the end we can only offer up our personal perspectives on this so I'm glad we've reached the point where we can respect each other enough to share this kind of time with each other.
I think where we disagree on this matter becomes apparent in the first little bit of your post. I think there is a link between playful mocking and dehumanisation. I've seen it happen far too often in my life, both to people I know personally and to people I don't, to believe otherwise really. I don't agree that racism manifests itself in specific, rigid ways, I do believe in that spectrum you talk about. It's about complex power balances, audience and context, intent - it's a complicated formula to work out. I'd argue that something could be racist even if it doesn't take on the conventional appearance.
I agree with you that believing "we're all the same" is an inherently flawed way of looking at the world. I think the people who live by this mantra certainly mean well, and you can mostly understand where they're coming from. Treating everybody the same way regardless of background, race, upbringing, sexuality, etc. it's general human decency distilled into a statement. I think the flaw comes when people who believe "we're all the same" are suddenly startled by cultural differences and can't adjust to them. If we're "all the same", anybody who acts differently or deals with their race/sexuality/upbringing in a personal, unconventional manner is immediately cast as an outsider. I absolutely subscribe to the view that noticing differences and celebrating them is a much faster route to equality and fairness.
My girlfriend is a brown-skinned Muslim-born girl from north London with a traditionally Indian Muslim name. I can't go through life treating her like the white-skinned non-religious girls called Laura and Sophie that I grew up with simply because "we're all the same". The hard facts are that they're clearly not. My girlfriend's skin colour and religious upbringing have informed her growth as a person, there's no way it can't have done in a predominantly white, predominantly non-religious/Christian country. To treat her the same as Laura and Sophie would be to ignore who my girlfriend really is and ignore the person she's been since she was born.
There's a great line from a film I saw last year called The Hate U Give that explains how I feel about this specific thing actually, when a black girl and her white boyfriend share this dialogue:
Boyfriend: "Starr, I just told you. I don't see colour. I see people for who they are, the exact same way I see you."
Starr: "If you don't see my blackness, you don't see me."
Where I think I disagree with you on this, though, is that I believe in a distinction between acknowledging peoples' differences, celebrating them, and treating them with respect. I don't believe mocking her parents' thick accents (her dad is half-Indian half-Ugandan, her mum is from Malaysia) would be a show of celebration or respect. I think that's where I draw the line. It's just mockery. I understand that in the right context these kinds of jokes can work. For example, there's a running joke with my Muslim colleague that he's a "choc ice" because he can't tolerate spicy food, he jabs back with taunts about traditional roles in the home for women. I never get involved because I'd never want to feel like I was upsetting anyone but in a private office that kind of talk just goes on without upsetting anyone or causing long-term damage.
But in this specific instance, "Squeaky" and "Wingman" should have known better. I don't think this is an issue of censorship - as far as I'm aware the club haven't told them to stop making the podcast - but it is an issue of the two of them not understanding the relationship between context, audience, and respect. A bit of "banter" between drunk mates in the pub doing mock Chinese accents is offensive and crass behaviour, but it's contained to the pub and doesn't go any further. When you take that pub chat to a podcast, however, that could potentially reach thousands of people, the responsibility of hosts to be respectful of their listeners immediately changes. And when you're employed by a club who are partially owned by people from the country whose accent you're mocking, you have to admit that that's really bloody irresponsible and probably a sack-worthy offence to do a "Me So Horney!" routine.
