Jackie Mason in trouble for calling Obama "Schvartze"

No one speaks Yiddish much any more, except the Hassidim.

In my distant memory, "schvartze" could have been used as a simple descriptive ("He's black"), or in a semi-derogatory semi-bad-taste-playful sense (can't think of a modern equivalent, maybe something like "He's a blackie"). It never came close to the horrors associated with the N-word. But tone was everything. A racist xenophobe could say "schvartze", just like "black", in a context that exuded contempt and dismissal, whether in Yiddish or in English.

Anyway, Obama condemned Pastor Wright for saying that racism was endemic in America, so I guess to Obama, it's no big deal. And Jackie Mason, even at the "height" (depth?) of his career, made his living by being notoriously offensive - and that was 40 years ago or so...

Our society - Jews included - is suffused, permeated, with racism against POC of the exact kind that oldgoat describes. No one speaks Yiddish any more, but the attitudes carry on - they may even have preserved a word like "schvarze" while speaking English, and yes, it would be derogatory and racist. Cf. "goy".

I can well imagine they had been through a lot. [url=http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/topic.php?tid=1083][color=r... are many links[/color][/url] to stories about Israeli racism against African Jews and the movement against that racism.

"It's not a demeaning word and I'm not going to defend myself."

It is, and Mason knows it is.  That's probably why he won't bother to defend himself.  If he wants to use it in his act, fine.  But don't say it's not demeaning.  That would be news to generations of Jews. 

Ahh well, he is just some dated irrelevant old media personality with outmoded ideas that were common in past generations. You can hardly expect him to conform to the bubble wrapped norms of today's polite conversation. On the other hand if he were an aging FN WWII vet, who made his name in Canadian politics we would throw the book at him, no?

If we are to condemn Mason we need to do the same with Mel Brooks.

Recall the very funny (though now dated) "Blazing Saddles". Cleavon Little and his family are seperated from the Wagon Train heading across the plains (seperated as in excluded because they are Black). The Wagon Train is attacked by "Indians". The Chief approached the wagon in which Little and his family cower. The Chief (played by Brooks) looks at this site with amazement and says "Shvartzes?"..."Los em gain" (let them go).

It was very funny.

In my very first post, I suggested we move it to babble banter. I wasn't joking. [oxymoron] But culture is probably a more appropriate venue.

So let's get this straight.  Mason makes a racist comment about a black man, and that WOULD be okay and we could cut him some slack...but since he's also racist against Palestinians, now it's a problem?

Seriously, we're pretending this isn't racist?  Really?

There is all sorts of comedy that relies on racist stereotypes and jokes.  Whether or not it is racist does not depend on whether the joke makes you laugh.  Most of us (especially white people) are socialized to find racist jokes funny, and everyone has a different "tolerance" level for racist jokes.

Recognizing that Mason's labeling of Obama as "a schwartze" is racist does not mean that now he's going to be forced to stop doing that.  Lots of people get off on "shock humour" or "ironic racism" or whatever it is he was doing (I don't know, didn't hear it in context, don't care to either).  But as josh says, if you're going to do it, don't pretend it's not racist and not demeaning.

It sure would be nice, though, if such stupid comedy went the way of the dinosaur, and people just got to the point where they just don't find it funny anymore.  

I'm a bit confused why this was moved?

And left to ponder why SSC dropped this bomb without thoughts of his own.  Meh.

Quote:

So let's get this straight.  Mason makes a racist comment about a black man, and that WOULD be okay and we could cut him some slack...but since he's also racist against Palestinians, now it's a problem?

Since you're trying so hard to misunderstand, I'll go through it again. 

 As others upthread have pointed out, the word itself isn't necessarily racist, but depends on intent.  Mel "Nobody move or....gets it" Brooks was cited as an example of someone using "Shvartzes" without malice.  We don't have to have a Pavlovian reaction to a word and assume that the speaker is this or that.  It is possible to give the benefit of the doubt.

When someone with a history of public bigotry, however, uses such a word, maybe we shouldn't dismiss it so easily.

Maysie wrote:

I thought Jackie Mason was dead.

If not dead, I've thought his type of humor died about 20 years ago.

Whenever I think of Jackie Mason I think, "I just flew in from Chicago...and boy are my arms tired!"

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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]

Yes, so what of comparison to Mason's use today?

I still don't get why it's not in the anti-racism forum and excuses are being legitimized.

Bizarro world.

Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor make no bones about comparing it to the word Nigger in their screenplay, the equation is blatant.

Sven wrote:

Maysie wrote:

I thought Jackie Mason was dead.

If not dead, I've thought his type of humor died about 20 years ago.

Whenever I think of Jackie Mason I think, "I just flew in from Chicago...and boy are my arms tired!"

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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]

Hey, I happen to like that type of standup

Again, the problem to me not the use of the term in the context of a standup comedy act but Mason's denial that the word is offensive.  And he must be going senile because he apologized for using the term in 1991 to refer to former NYC Mayor David Dinkins.

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/jackie-mason-racist-call-obama-schwartz...

Hmmm..,  I grew up listening to his ilk on Ed Sullivan and shows like that.  That sort of Borscht belt humour was the mainstay of standup comics of my youth.  I wonder if that's why I'm a bit tone deaf to it, and the issues that arose.

I mean really, it is totally dinosaur.  His demographic must be first wave boomers and up, like me.

Cueball wrote:

There is no comparison. Today. I also don't understand why this thread isn't in the AR forum. The topic was raised basically "is this racist or not?"

The real question is, why is this thread in any forum? Some old comic, whom no one takes seriously, gets up in the U.S. and makes offensive jokes. About the goddamn U.S. president, for that matter. In a non-broadcast setting. Using a Yiddish word (dead language) whose derogatory (or any) connotations are lost on 99% of the population. In a country where racism is [b][i]ENDEMIC[/i][/b] from top to bottom of the society (as Pastor Wright eloquently and passionately reminded us), and where the person who publicly DENIED that racism is endemic is now the target of this pathetic joke (which we haven't even heard yet - just the word).

Every single day, minute, and second, African Americans (among others) are portrayed right on TV, movies, the internet, the print media, in the most racially charged and demeaning terms. Yes - notwithstanding the election of Mr. Obama, the Racism Denier, to the Big Job. Yet we are to have an etymological debate of whether some term in a dead language is offensive.

It is hard to imagine a more insignificant trivialization of the problem of racism in North America today than this incident and this thread. I've changed my mind again. Put it in babble banter, or better yet, just close it.

I edited out my unprovoked shot at SSC just as you were posting your post, Caissa.

Star Spangled, you're right, I shouldn't have said that about you. I apologize.

I'm going to recuse myself at this point from posting and moderating this thread.

I think I understand Maysie's frustration with this thread.

I think you were right, Maysie, to move it from the AR forum in order to make the point that this isn't really anti-racist discussion that is happening - or at least, if it is, it's like, the pre-kindergarten level.

Is it really "anti-racist discussion" to debate whether or not it's racist to use an old-fashioned and demeaning term for black people in a comedy routine? Or, if it is, is that really the level we babblers are at on the subject? Because that's kind of disheartening if so.

I think it would be interesting to have a discussion about the disconnect between what we know is racist, and what we find funny, because there is a disconnect for a lot of us, where we'll laugh at a comedian's jokes, even though some of them are racist. Why do we do that? And is there a difference in effect between the racist humour of a Jackie Mason and, say, a Russell Peters?

I was just talking to a friend about this thread, and he's half a generation older than me and, like oldgoat, grew up with this "borscht belt humour". He grew up laughing at this stuff, and while he says it's hackneyed now, the whole "take my wife, please" and "I introduced my wife to something she's never seen before - the kitchen" kind of corny stuff still makes him smirk or chuckle. Meanwhile, I was like, "Really? That makes you laugh?" Because I don't even find that funny in a suspend-my-PC-sensibilities-for-the-duration-of-the-routine way. I mean, I get where the humour is supposed to come in, but it's not really funny to me because it's just so overdone and I can't relate to the culture in which it grew, having come of age when it wasn't the norm for women to be housewives.

Meanwhile, I laugh at Russell Peters' standup stuff, even though a staple of his routine is stereotyping immigrants. Why do I find that funny when I know that stereotyping immigrants is racist? Perhaps it's because, as a white person, I have privilege, and I am submerged in a culture where the stereotypes he exploits in his routine are commonplace beliefs, even if I don't actually believe them. Or perhaps it's the old, "I can say it because I'm a person of colour, but you'd better not" which gives the audience permission to laugh, whether they're white people laughing because it reinforces the stereotypes we're not supposed to believe or indulge, or people of colour laughing perhaps because it feels like sharing an in-joke or something.

Humour is one of those things that is so personal and so wrapped up in culture and era and yes, racism, classism, and sexism. What we find funny can tell us a lot about ourselves and our assumptions if we can get over the defensiveness and rush to justify ourselves and indemnify anything we find ourselves responding positively to.

Huh?  Who's categorizing anything?

Jewish humour, which became the foundation of Vaudeville and Hollywood humour in the post-WWI period, is primarily self-mocking. It was a European survival technique. Example:

A Gentile man calls his mother and says, "Mother, I know you 're expecting me for dinner this evening, but something important has come up and I can't make it." His mother says: "OK."

What I find fascinating about these old jokes is that, on the surface, they appear to mock Gentiles - but just one millimetre down, they portray Gentiles as more civilized, more trusting, less self-centred than Jews.

When you go a centimetre deeper, you find another meaning - that Gentiles can "afford" to be this way, because they weren't oppressed the way Jews were.

Then, at an even deeper layer, you get the opposite again. Jews were often complicit, willing agents of their self-isolation in Europe, given their religious and cultural heritage. Zionism is the ultimate and worst manifestation of that self-isolation, taking it to the extremes of carving out a separate country and using it as a base to oppress others.

I hope I'm not reading too much into these,  but Jewish humour is what it is, layers of contradiction. It's embedded in my soul, and I need to deconstruct it as part of understanding myself.