Dear Ninth Graders: Jokes Are Not Just Jokes

February 12, 2020

Dear 9^th grade block, students and families,

            In late October, an equity leader and a vice principal came to our block after a couple students answered one of Ms. Barnes’ questions-of-the-day by making light of owning other human beings. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard something obnoxious and oblivious from some of our boys.

            My own conversation with students at the time was about humor, privilege, and pain.

            Humor has the power to bring people together in laughter, to lessen pain, to put one at odds with the ordinary so that people might see the absurdity and wrongness of a situation. Humor also has the power to degrade, to bully, and especially to silence, because once people are laughing at something that’s vulgar or mean, it’s the choice of others to come across as edgy and cool or, instead, as oversensitive and scolding, and who wants to be the scold?

            Meanwhile, degrading humor is one of the weapons of privilege. By privilege, I refer to that which belongs to what Audre Lorde called the “mythical norm”: “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure” (Sister Outsider). The closer one is to the mythical norm, the less likely one is to be afflicted by or to understand historical and social tensions and pain. Those in the mythical norm who make degrading jokes about others, at worst, deliberately want to smash others down, and, at best, innocently enjoy what they think is a joke; but either way, a hierarchy of power and shame is reinforced. Let’s be clear that “innocence” is also what we call privilege: Saying, “I was just making a joke!” or “Why are you so sensitive?” or “I wasn’t talking to you” or “I don’t see why it’s a big deal” is acting out of either or both ignorance and selfishness.

            And such humor is selfish because it causes pain—hurting people who include themselves at the butt of a joke, and hurting a community because it basks in meanness and crowds out others.

            Mostly, what I remember wanting to communicate—and this was asking for just the smallest piece of what I should have been asking—is for students to actively be aware of others in the world: be aware of experiences not your own, and be aware of other people in the room, and be aware of what they hear or feel because of what you say and how you behave.

            Yesterday, a group of boys were laughing at a rape joke. I don’t mean to pick on them here, because this letter is not about them, though their laughter was the impetus for my writing. I know they have good hearts; I like them all personally. But what allowed them to laugh at the joke is the same thing that allowed other jokes to blithely occur elsewhere and previously, and I want all of you, all of you, to know that jokes are not just jokes; that any humor playing off stereotypes or race or gender violence or sexual orientation actively, actively, fuels systemic racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I also feel I need to push you further than I tried to do last time: It’s not enough to refrain from such humor: It’s your responsibility to learn what it’s like for other people; it’s on you to push and remind others to be better; and, if you have it in you, do these things because all people need our good care, and our love.

            There is so much warm, embracing energy in our classroom. Feed that with kindness, consideration, humility, restraint, and your good hearts.

David Grosskopf