Jester

One thing I hate about racism is that sometimes it’s funny. It can be so bad that I just laugh. That isn’t the problem though. The problem comes when a friend sees me laughing at the joke and thinks it’s okay to make more racist jokes, or they think that I’m okay with racist jokes because I’ve laughed at them before. I didn’t know the reasons for it before but there were some racist jokes that I’d laugh at and other racist jokes that I just found plain bad. Weirdly, there are also turn-offs for me. I’d see a joke online and find it funny, only to see a comment saying “I’m black and I found this funny” as a response to any criticism on the racist joke. I never know what I’m looking for when I click on their icon to check out their profile, but I’m always disappointed.

There have been a few times where I’ve argued with my friends, feeling like they’ve refused to grow up past their younger selves. Oftentimes, being one of if not the only black friend they have, I’ve felt the burden of having to put them right when they fall into relying on racist jokes. While hanging out in the student common-room at lunch, one white friend repeated a joke about black people stealing that I’d heard one too many times from the group already. After the first time I realised I was tired of it, I thought about how I should respond the next time. This time, the trigger was someone’s packet of chicken-bites going missing.

“Jordaaan.” Tim chided at me playfully.

The group laughed.

“Dead.” I said.

“What? You laughed at that before.”

“It’s the hundredth time I’m hearing that joke.”

“But you did find it funny before today.” Tim justified, face tomatoing with embarrassment. “So you only found it funny the first ninety-nine times?”

Tim wasn’t in my bad books yet, but he was getting close.

“It’s overused.” I explained. “I don’t find it funny anymore.”

“Come on, it’s just a joke. You never used to be this sensitive about it.”

“Well, if your goal is to make me laugh, using the same racist joke over and over isn’t going to do it. If your goal is to make fun of me and make other people laugh, keep doing it, but don’t say I’m your friend.”

“Okay,” Winston, the ever-present voice of wisdom, stepped in. “Tim, we know you weren’t trying to be racist, but to be honest I wouldn’t like it if you kept going on about an Asian stereotype. Jordan, all okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” I said.

I realised I hadn’t done a good job of diffusing an explosion when Winston quietly told me that I was justified but could have handled the situation better. I’d lulled Tim into a false sense of security, allowing previous mock accusations before turning on him, but it was necessary. My fear was that Tim, or another friend would make a racist joke around someone else and then I’d be the person they refer to when they say something like “I’m not racist. One of my best friends are black.” That was also the year Henry joined the friend group. I couldn’t let him get the wrong idea. Tall, blonde, and heir to a small family law firm, Henry could have been popular with anyone but seemed a very down-to-earth individual, fitting in with the crowds that Winston and I mainly circled.

A few lunches later, after our law and politics class, Henry welcomed me to join him in getting lunch from a less healthy but more tasty pizza chain outside of school. I rode shotgun in his second-hand silver Volkswagen Polo and we sang along to some pop songs on the radio. There was a Kanye West song heavily shaking the speakers at one point and our abilities to sing along suddenly diverged, although Henry was still smiling as he drove. He turned down the music as we approached the school car park.

“Can I say the N-word? The one in the song, like ‘my…’ you know.” Henry worded the phrase in a way that indicated he intended to use the special version of the word with an ‘a’ at the end, rather than the ‘er’, same as it was pronounced in the song. I understood why he didn’t sing along to the Kanye West song. Henry was a nice guy and had never given me a reason to think otherwise for the many months that I’d known him. Granting him the N-word pass wasn’t something I thought I’d regret.

“Just when you’re around me.” I said.

“Oh, obviously.” He beamed.

At the end of the year, Henry threw an after-exam party at his house. Considering the fact that Winston’s dad offered to drop me off, and all of the studying was now done, there was nothing my parents could use to reason why I couldn’t attend. Henry’s home — or rather his parents’ home — was unassuming on the outside, but on the inside it looked like a sort of museum. The fireplace in the living room was the first thing I noticed. Its grey-veined white marble stood out against the simple wooden panels that formed the walls around it, almost looking like a portal to another world. A sturdy, mahogany piano stood beside it, keys bared and challenging me to remember anything from the few classes I had as a child. Other parts of the house were either wallpapered or covered in bookshelves. Whether those shelves had books or ornaments to decorate them seemed to be up to the feeling of the room. Winston and I were one of the last to arrive, so guests had already found their tribes.

I knew everyone that had come from our school, and easily began gravitating toward them with Winston by my side while Henry glided between groups. Music was bumping out from a set of computer speakers. My shyer self had no intention of meeting new people.

“Yo! Jordan, let me introduce you.”

My intentions were dashed and I was reluctantly peeled away from Winston who just patted my shoulder as a parting gift. Since he had already met Henry’s primary school friends at previous parties, Winston’s nod and wave was enough for his greeting to them before he rushed off to meet our school friends that he knew. I tried to hear the names of people that I’d never meet again, and managed to commit their names to memory until I repeated that it was nice to meet them. After the introductions, there was a lull. I had nothing to say and Henry’s childhood friends had no questions they were keen to ask. Suddenly, Henry perked up and addressed his friends.

“Watch this.” He looked me in the eye and raised a hand to dap me up. “What’s up my N***a?”

My hand slowly rose for the most penitent dap of my life. I’d written my own fate.

Kofi was a bit of a recluse at school, residing in the library most of the time. I didn’t know he existed until Winston introduced us one day after school. He became a close friend over that last year. Cambridge-bound, I considered him one of the smartest people in our year group. Witnessing what had happened with Henry, he took me aside to a book-shelved corner of the living room. His round-rimmed glasses and neatly cropped hair a perfect fit for the wisdom he seemed to gather.

“Jordan, never use that word, and never let anyone call you that word.” Kofi said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a word that’s been used to degrade and put black people down. I don’t know why you would let yourself get called that.”

“I didn’t know he’d call me that- I mean I gave him permission to use the ‘a’-ending version, but not for that-”

“Don’t give anyone permission to use it.”

“Yeah, I won’t, thanks. Why can’t I say it though? We can reclaim the word, can’t we?”

“Who are we reclaiming it from?” Kofi asked. “I’m not enslaved and neither were my ancestors. Were yours?”

“No…” I said. “but black people are still called it. Us using it as a term of endearment takes the power of the word and neutralises it.”

“Yes, black people are called it in hate. But oftentimes, when we hear brothers use it against brothers, it’s also in hate. It’s just continuing a practice of self-hate taught to us. We have the power now to not let that word be used at all. Do you hear any other races referring to themselves with any derogatory terms? We need to be better.”

“I have actually heard that…” truthfully I had heard other races referring to themselves with ‘reclaimed’ derogatory terms, but more truthfully, it wasn’t nearly as prominent at hearing the use of the n-word. “Maybe it’s just not as common because we’ve been able to derive the ‘a’-ending version from the ‘er’-ending version.”

“There’s no difference.” Kofi said, gesticulating as if to dash my argument away. “It’s just a relaxed pronunciation of the same word…. same as saying ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’. Don’t use it.”

A black person checking me on that was something I needed. Kofi’s words stuck with me, but I still couldn’t ignore how hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of other black people felt about the word. I could understand Kofi’s point of view but I couldn’t bring myself to see the ‘a’-ending version of the n-word as anything but an evolution of language that reappropriated a demeaning word in a way that could empower black people.

In the same way that some women have seized to the b-word and the LGBT community have taken ownership of the word “queer”, parts of the black community have incorporated the n-word into the African-American Vernacular. With the word’s exportation to communities overseas such as here in the United Kingdom, I would say that the ‘a’-ending n-word has its home in Ebonics. One thing I could agree with Kofi on though, was that I would not be giving anyone a license that allowed anyone to call me that again, even in jest. A teenager taking more liberties than they were granted is something that I, as a teenager, should have seen coming. I gave Henry an n-word pass and he used it out of jurisdiction. I didn’t expect to be called the word for an impromptu performance. There was no part of that situation that I found funny.

Questioning myself on whether I should have given Henry the n-word pass led me to wonder if I should have had the n-word pass myself. Kofi’s argument berated me. Kofi wasn’t a descendant of enslaved people, so how could he dictate what those descendants shouldn’t be saying? How could I argue what I should be allowed to replicate from those descendants if I’d never been called that word in hostility myself? Was experiencing racism enough of a pass for me to use it?

Looking back on my experiences, there were some situations of that I no-longer found funny, not because they were racist, but because it wasn’t a novel experience. I thought maybe I’d grown up, maturing past the days that I could laugh at the theme of racism, then I recalled a racist meme that I’d seen online and found myself smiling as I shook my head. The meme was racist against black people and I’d sent it to my cousin Obi who also laughed at it. I didn’t doubt that he’d laugh at another meme of similar humour if we came across one. I wondered if it was because I didn’t have many black friends, as my parents and Obi loved to point out. Obi could have just been laughing with me and not seeing the humour as something fit to share with his largely-black friend-group. But even when I made more black friends, I laughed along with them at things I felt we wouldn’t laugh at in other company.

It wasn’t until university that I realised why I found racism sometimes funny. One of my friend-groups back then was dominated by Ryan. The old boy was from somewhere in Essex, and claimed to have a bloodline he could trace back to the Tudors. He admitted that university was the first place that he managed to make friends outside of his race but I didn’t hold that against him. He apparently didn’t have many options to choose from around his hometown. It seemed, to pass the time, Ryan had revelled in positioning himself as a champion of received pronunciation and intelligent conversation. Although he didn’t seem very open to new ideas, he was clearly a hard worker and believed that all men are equal in our courts. His dogma was that it was his destiny to uphold that equality once he finished law school.

I didn’t consider that Ryan’s thoughts of destiny could be much more than the average law student’s dream until it became clear that he believed himself to be our cohort’s main character. His haughtiness was somewhat endearing at first, but the tipping point came after I (in his mind) severely misapplied the law to a legal problem during a revision session with a study-group. We were in another friend’s flat and he pounced on my error to cement his intellect’s place at the top of the group. My classmates were huddled around the living room area couches while I sat at the dining table, charging my phone with the only outlet available nearby. It was close enough that I could participate in the discussions, but a little away enough from the group who were more seriously focusing on their studies at that moment.

“How did you even get into this university?” Ryan said snidely.

“Clearing.” I replied bluntly.

“Clearing? So you failed your A Levels.”

“No, I just overestimated myself and took more A Levels than I needed to. I probably got the same points as you overall.”

“Not if they let you in through clearing, buddy.” Ryan patronised.

“Okay.” I said. “Actually, maybe I got more points than you… since I took more subjects.” It was clear to me that Ryan thought I wasn’t very intelligent, so I played into it.

“What? No that’s not how it works. You have to actually do well in your exams to get the points.”

“Yeah. So you just need to pass tests.”

“Anyone can pass a test, you need to be smart to score higher and get more points.”

“Surely, if anyone can pass a test, anyone can get high scores. You don’t need to be smart, you just need to know the answers.”

Although I was teasing Ryan, those words weren’t far from what I actually believed. Ryan and I were both in the same university, studying the same course. How we both got there didn’t matter if it showed we were both capable of reaching the same place.

“Knowing how to answer the questions means you’re probably smart.”

“Forget papers, in the real world, only these matter.” I held up my skinny biceps.

“Let’s arm wrestle then.” Ryan pulled out a chair next to me.

I could hear some eye-rolls as some of the other group members audibly derided the unnecessary laddishness in the room. It wasn’t easy, but I beat Ryan surprisingly quickly.

“You were bred to be stronger, so of course you’d win in an arm wrestle.” Ryan snuffed. “Play me in chess.”

“I wasn’t bred to be stronger.” I sneered. “You probably just don’t work out as much. I just started doing push-ups every morning.”

“Alright, chess will be equally balanced at least.”

Ryan was already launching a chess app on his phone. I looked at the group for any support, but they’d already resumed their revision without us.

“You can go first.” Ryan said, sliding the phone in front of me.

I looked at the pieces and played a basic opening. Ryan was probably better than me at chess, but his overconfidence in that led him to make a couple of bad mistakes. I didn’t gain too much ground during the game, but by the time Ryan realised that I wasn’t going to give him an easy win, I’d already put his black pieces into an uncomfortable position. He must have realised that I had set him up to put him at a serious disadvantage. Maybe, if he was able to call on the spirits of chess grandmasters, he could end the game in a draw. That wouldn’t have been good enough for his ego though. There was no timer on the game so he could spend as long as he wanted trying to find a way out of the trap he’d walked himself into. His next move was to ignore the game entirely and somehow our match ended without ending. I didn’t really care.

“Gosh, change the song.” Ryan said, taking the phone off the table as he turned around. I’d even forgotten that music was playing. “I don’t like rap music.”

“Oh, any reason why?

“It’s just about being a gangster… drugs, killing, and treating women disrespectfully. I prefer to read good poetry.”

“Romantic poetry was about treating women disrespectfully, wasn’t it?”

“Name one.” Ryan said.

“There’s one about a guy begging a girl to let him defile her before she dies because then worms would defile her instead.”

“What?”

“It goes… ‘world enough and time’- Andrew Marvell!” I suddenly recalled.

“Oh To His Coy Mistress. Not World Enough and Time.” Ryan chuffed. “That’s metaphysical poetry, not Romantic.”

I wanted to point out that I was just quoting the poem, not saying the title, but it felt futile to even consider trying to prove Ryan wrong. His ego wouldn’t let me. I didn’t even bother pointing out that my point still stood that the poem had one of the themes that he so loathed about rap music. I shared a knowing look with one of the members of the group, Michael, who was also aware of Ryan’s superiority complex.

“Let’s just get back to work.” I said.

We rejoined the group’s revision and reached the topic of legal reform. My chosen topic was assisted suicide. Stopping short of exactly saying it, Ryan declared himself the arbiter of morality and rebuked me for deciding to consider the issue as part of my studies.

“It’s not selfish to want death if you’re terminally ill.” I said firmly. “Especially if you don’t feel coerced. You could just as easily say it’s selfish to force someone to live-”

“Gosh, that’s a very black thought.”

“Woah, woah.” Michael chided. “What makes the way we think any different to you?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean race.”

Michael laughed at Ryan’s flustered reaction, so I could tell that he would have played around with the same type of jokes before. The other party members looked between us, uncomfortable at first, but quickly realising the lightness of the situation. One of them, Oliver, who I’d spent the initial months of university teasing for being northern despite his claims to the contrary, let out a small chuckle but Ryan didn’t accept the humour.

“It’s okay,” I gestured to calm Ryan down. “I know what you meant… more to do with the light and the dark, known and unknown. I studied English Literature at school too. I’ve read books.”

“Yeah, it’s called the black-and-white dualism, and it has nothing to do with race.”

“…thanks for letting me know.” I said.

Ryan then gave a lecture on black-and-white dualism that I couldn’t care to summarise. He then spoke about how making jokes that hinted at racism were not funny and could never be funny, telling each of us off for it. His argument was that we wanted to get rid of racism, we shouldn’t make light of it. That included using the n-word, which was very prevalent in rap. If we didn’t want white people to say the n-word, we shouldn’t promote it in music or casual conversation.

“You’re like Atticus, Ryan.” Oliver said.

“Well I wouldn’t say that. But if that’s how you see me, I guess I am a hero lawyer in the making.” Ryan said with a smug smile.

“Especially Atticus in Go Set a Watchman.” Oliver said.

My mouth gaped into a shocked smile.

“I haven’t read it.” Ryan said.

“Let’s end it there.” I clapped to end the scene.

I believe Oliver saw Ryan to think of himself as naturally better than those he surrounded himself with, despite his aspirations to be a paragon of morality and justice. Atticus Finch was the father of the child narrator in a book we all would have studied at our secondary schools, To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, based in 1930’s America, Atticus was a well-respected lawyer in a frankly racist town. Against futility and the violent racial prejudice of his community, Atticus choose to represent a black man who had been falsely accused of raping a white woman, because he believed that although “all men are not created equal” since “some people are smarter than others”, all men should be given a fair and equal trial. In the book’s sequel, Go Set a Watchman, and through the narrator’s matured mind around 20 years later, it’s revealed that Atticus’ beliefs of some people being smarter than others applied to black people who he viewed as “still in their childhood as a people”. Atticus was fundamentally a good man, but deeply flawed with racist beliefs.

I wouldn’t say Oliver’s was a racist joke, but what he said was very funny to me. I realised that it wasn’t necessarily racist jokes that I found funny, just jokes that had a purpose. There are jokes that are made at the expense of one race for the purpose of making another race feel good or more human than their counterpart. That sort of racist joke, at the expense of those less privileged, could never be good sport. The use of the n-word in that way is never okay. But with art or comedy I believe it needs to be looked at in a different way. One of the many reasons for art or comedy, classic comedy, is to hold a mirror up to society and show us who we are. It’s to ask us why we’re the way we are. That type of comedy can make us laugh, but by finding the midpoint between the mundane day-to-day and the abhorrent unspeakable. Done well, it can point out a stereotype and hold people to account. Done poorly and it’s just not funny. Done by the right person, adequately placed and suitably experienced, it can be a poignant way to open a window into someone’s life experience or challenge the way we think. We don’t need to look deep into literature to see that we should always take racism seriously. As for saying the n-word, maybe we’re all prohibited. But some of us are more prohibited than others.