You know it has happened to you, someone tells a racist joke in your business or maybe even at a networking event. What do you do?
Carmen Van Kerckhove at Race in the Workplace provides some great advice on how to handle this touchy situation tactfully with impact.
The best response to a racist joke should accomplish 3 things:
1) Communicate that you find this behavior unacceptable.
2) Demonstrate that the joke is racist.
3) Inflict as little damage as possible to your working relationship with the joker.
Read more on Responding to Racist Jokes
It depends on who the person is making the remark. Some people I would flatly tell them the remark is inappropriate. Others I could say alot less and they would get the hint. Either way, racism is unacceptable.
Carmen makes a good point to act dumb when a racist joke is told. Good idea to make the joke teller uncomfotable by having them explain their stupid humor.
Playing dumb is probably the best strategy, but I would be annoyed enough that I would have to let the joker know that I found it not so amusing.
It is a good point, how to respond to such joke. I have had to deal with deaf racism, a form not many people accept. That is harder than you can realize as a hearing person. When a hearing person pretends to know sign language or all of sudden change the way they talk to others around me despite the fact others can hear and I can lipread, it is an “unintended” comment or action.
It is certainly nothing like skin or cultural racism, after all if deaf racism is like the make up of the human population, then deaf racism would be only less than 4 percent of the entire racism issue. Not such a major issue, after all the deaf popluation only has to deal with the majority, hearing people. At least we don’t discriminate based on hearing people skin color or culture, just their ignorance.
It goes on in the blogosphere, too, even at big blogs like Consumerist. I’ve read comments where a person called out the writer/ blogger but were attacked by other unenlightened readers.
My father always told me that the best way to fight such attitudes was to joke back, but in a clever way to make it obvious that their behavior was unnacceptable. Except that’s not always so easy. And what do you do if the racist is your boss, or won’t even hire you but you can’t prove it?
Attitudes are the way they are because of one of three reasons:
(1) The person is uneducated.
(2) The person has a bad experience with a “foreigner” or knows someone who has.
(3) Both of the above.
The only way to win over in either case is to take the high road and to show that you do not behave in the way that the other person has stereotyped you or other “foreigners”. This has worked for me, but not always.
But here’s the kicker, what surprises people. Many people assume that it is only “white” people that are racists and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are racists and bigots all over the world, and they come in many colors and cultures. People shelter in their own world and opinions and anyone outside of that has to be wrong.
I could give loads of examples that I’ve witnessed of non-white people acting like racists (cultural or otherwise), but it’s not necessary. Just know that it’s everywhere. [In case you’re wondering, I’m an East Indian who grew up in Canada.]
And as long as that attitude is propagated, various forms of racism will continue somewhere in the world. Even with the entire, we are not yet a global village.