Privilege, humour and "good faith": How to avoid telling offensive jokes

On several recent occasions I've witnessed acquaintances making offensive and oppressive remarks, often intended as jokes. This has been extremely annoying and disappointing. Nevertheless, because I have often ended up being called upon to explain to these acquaintances why these remarks caused so much offence and turmoil, I think I have gained some general insights which I’d like to share here. Of course, none of these insights are particularly original – I'm drawing much of my analysis from people less privileged than myself, who I've cited frequently on this blog before. However, I hope my own take on the matter will be helpful to at least a few people.

Let's start from the very beginning, by defining some terms. When I describe someone as “privileged” in some respect, all I mean is that they are not oppressed. To be oppressed is to be treated badly in some systematic way and for no good reason. What counts as a “good reason” is, of course, up for debate. I would argue that prisoners in general constitute an oppressed group, but many other people would argue that the way prisoners are treated is justifiable as punishment for crimes. I will simply be assuming that the examples of poor treatment I cite here are not justifiable and thus count as oppressive. The word “systematically” is also important. To constitute oppression, poor treatment must be sufficiently frequent and/or predictable to undermine the oppressed person’s sense of safety or ability to function effectively in a particular context. Someone who is treated badly only on rare occasions is not oppressed.

People can be oppressed because of something to do with their social or public identity, including their gender identity, their race, their sexual orientation, whether or not they satisfy gendered beauty ideals, whether or not they have a disability, their religious or other ideological views, their level of education, their physical or mental health status, their occupation and so on. People can also be oppressed on an individual level – we can say that a person in an abusive relationship, for instance, is oppressed by their partner. For present purposes, I’ll focus on oppression that arises from social identities.

The major point I want make in this post is that a person’s interpretation of a remark concerning some aspect of their identity will, quite justifiably, depend on whether they have a history of being oppressed because of it. To take a straightforward example, I was recently approached in public by a woman who suggested I should get a haircut (obviously she disapproved of men with long hair). I thought this was rude and strange, but it did not particularly upset me. My partner, in contrast, was deeply offended on my behalf. We soon realised my partner was imagining the way that she would feel if a remark of that sort had been directed towards her. You see, it is simply a fact of our society that women are frequently subject to rude unsolicited remarks about their appearance, often from strangers. However, I, as a man, am very seldom subject to such remarks. In this respect, I am privileged and my partner, a woman, is oppressed. For me, this stranger’s comment was merely a curiosity, whereas for her it would constitute part of a pattern of behaviour that forces her to be continuously self-conscious about her appearance and thus undermines her comfort in public spaces.

I am deeply fortunate in that pretty much every interpersonal slight I experience has the character of a once-off occurrence like that one. People are, of course, occasionally rude or unpleasant to me, but it is never systematic. It does not threaten to undermine by public standing in a given context. Being largely immune to the impact of oppressive language can make it difficult for people with levels of privilege to my own to empathise with the apparent “touchiness” of people who have suffered oppression. The point to remember is that, if you’re a member of an oppressed group, it is implicit that your social standing is constantly in question.

This quickly becomes apparent in the context of humour, since many jokes are essentially instances of intentional rudeness. When friends tease each other, this surface-level rudeness is neutralised by a general presumption that the “offending party” does not genuinely hold the other in contempt and has no intention to offend or call the other’s standing into question. For instance, because I am a philosopher, friends often make jokes implying or presupposing that I am lazy or unworldly. I, in turn, might accuse a friend who works in business of being excessively concerned with money. And so on.

Because neither philosophers nor businesspeople constitute an oppressed class, a relatively small presumption of good faith goes a long way in interpreting these sorts of jokes as inoffensive. I would be surprised if someone genuinely felt that my being a philosopher was grounds for treating me poorly, and so I’m inclined to interpret apparent rudeness as a joke, even when it comes from someone whose opinions about philosophers are not well known to me. In contrast, a person who is oppressed on the grounds of her race, for instance, encounters mistreatment on a regular basis and so is more likely to interpret apparently racist remarks as reflecting genuinely racist attitudes.  

This is not to say that apparently oppressive remarks can never reasonably be interpreted as harmless, even affectionate, instances of humour. All manner of bad language is appreciated in private between close friends, where the basic presupposition of mutual respect has been established. The point is that this is an extraordinary circumstance: in a society where oppressive attitudes towards a particular group are entrenched, it is usually reasonable to interpret apparent expressions of such attitudes as actual expressions.

To bring this point home, it is worth drawing attention to one of the few circumstances under which privileged people actually do bear some risk of being marked with a social stigma, namely when they are accused of bigotry. It is telling, and deeply ironic, that this is one area where privileged people tend to be rather “touchy” indeed. I have seen white people airily dismiss objections to racist remarks – “some people have no sense of humour” – and then react with indignant fury when accused (even in a joking tone) of racism. Rather than indulging our immediate defensive reactions to this sort of accusation, our instinctive responses in these cases should alert us to how difficult it is to “laugh off” what another person is saying when we feel that our social standing is genuinely at risk.

So this is my practical advice to anyone who understands themselves as unprejudiced (I disregard, in several senses of the word, the openly prejudiced), but who nevertheless feel tempted to tell jokes that imply or presuppose offensive attitudes towards particular groups of people. Firstly, are you sure you don’t have these attitudes? I have to ask, because many forms of bigotry are extremely common. And some of these are more-or-less officially sanctioned. To take one indicator, mainstream comedy films are – these days, at least – unlikely to attempt overt racism against black people, but still get a good deal of mileage out of mocking people from less politically powerful ethnic minorities, not to mention trans people, fat people, people who use illegal drugs, sex workers and so on. It is likely that many of us simply laugh along, and indeed gain some social capital by sharing these jokes with other privileged people, without seriously thinking about how they serve to oppress. Being a good person doesn't simply involve good intentions, but some degree of self-examination. We all have prejudices acquired from the broader culture. It is worth doing the work of examining yours.

Secondly, even if you really, really don’t have any bigoted attitudes, realise that it might nevertheless be reasonable for the audience of your joke to interpret it as expressing such attitudes. Just because you, in your privilege, are normally able to assume that the people surrounding you are acting in good faith doesn't mean that everyone will (or would be sensible to) operate with that assumption. Rather than simply assuming that you’ll be interpreted as acting in good faith, consider whether you've adequately demonstrated good faith in your past interactions with this particular audience. And, even then, err on the side of caution. A single joke which signals that a widespread oppressive attitude is in play can colour an oppressed person’s perception of the context to a much greater extent than is obvious to an outsider. Is that joke really so funny that it’s worth even a small risk of undermining someone’s sense of being respected and thus their ability to engage fully in the conversation?