There, and back again

So, I took a little personal journey with myself on the issue of racism. The journey started with my earlier post on the not-so-silent racism apparent in comments by Bill O'Reilly about Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem.

The journey took an uncomfortable turn a couple of weeks later while I was discussing photo selection in class. I showed the class a photo of a young Irish girl, probably about 11, smiling and having a good time at a St. Patrick's Day parade. There were words painted on her face, something like "Kiss Me I'm Irish" and a student pointed out that some other words around her mouth had been rubbed off somehow.

I made an off-the-cuff remark: "Probably washed off while she was drinking her beer." (Not cool, as Amy would say later.) And then, after a pause, I told the class, "Oh, I'm allowed to say that, I'm Irish."

But my own words left a bad taste in my mouth that day.

I am Irish, but that doesn't excuse what I said.

Just the previous week, we had discussed how to avoid using sexist and racist language in newswriting. My point then, as usual, is that it all comes down to showing respect for each other's culture.

As I drove home after making that comment about the Irish girl, I came to the conclusion that mine was worst kind of excuse. It's the excuse that opens the door to racial bigotry. The next step would be, "I can make fun of your race so long as I'm making fun of my own."

Suddenly, all the bad jokes I learned in my youth flooded over me. The jokes in which the punchlines hinged on the stereotypes that all Irish are drunks, all Poles are stupid, all Italians are cowardly, and all Jews are miserly.

With one off-hand comment, I had moved from journalism professor into the Mind of Mencia, and I did not like the company I was keeping.

The next week, I apologized to the class. I told them that if we are to respect each other's race and ethnicity, then it should begin with respect for our own.

The Irish members of the class - and there are quite a few - shrugged it off. The Irish love to tell jokes about their drinking, one said. A colleague who was visiting the class for an evaluation that day did not even mention the incident. He also said he was more than happy to be a reference for me. The incident faded into distant memory.

But I did think about it from time to time. There are some really good jokes about how much the Irish drink. They're funny without being mean.

So, where do we draw the line?

Was my sin not that I made an insulting comment, but that I made one that wasn't funny?

Sometimes I watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and how he and his correspondents banter back and forth about race, sex and ethnicity. But they seem to keep it light and fun. They don't ever seem mean.

Perhaps inappropriate racial humor can be described the way a Supreme Court justice once defined pornography, essentially that "I don't know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it."

Perhaps the test on racial/ethnic humor could simply be this:

1) It has to be funny.
2) It should not be mean. It should not cause harm. It should not inflict pain on the group that it is directed toward.

Meeting that test takes a comedic genius, and I suppose that in the end I have learned that that's not me. And, neither is it Bill O'Reilly