Ethnic Humor: How bad is it?

When Ethnic Humor Goes Digital

Written by Lillian Boxman-Shabtai and Limor Shifman, their 2013 article takes a look at how ethnic groups are mocked, specifically in “forwarded emails.” Focusing on Israeli culture, they dive into 1000 emails and analyze 130 texts that involve ethnic groups related to the culture.

Why I chose this article?

This article was an easy chose for me. Growing up, I used to get forwards all sorts of “humorous” emails– some I found funny; most I found annoying or uncalled for. In the article, it mentions how these types of emails are often stereotypical, and I have to agree. Regardless of what they were referring to, I often found myself rolling my eyes at how ignorant the humor was because it focused on basic things rather than higher intellectual humor. Though most people don’t receive these emails anymore (they are rather outdated), the content, humor, and technological aspects still exist. Getting on Twitter, you still see these types of stereotypical humor. People think its a quick way to get some laughs without thinking of the actual harm it is doing to these ethnic groups.

Argument

After reading this article, I concur with the idea that ethnic humor is consequential. It’s basically watered-down racism.

Support

“Aggression humor is maladaptive in terms of bringing mental health benefits, as it may deter adjustment and resilience and cause attachment avoidance, lower self-esteem, loneliness, aggression, and maladjustment in the family” (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00123/full). Aggression humor is a type of humor used to hide real feelings about a specific topic. When it comes to ethnic humor, the aggression appears because of the distaste for a specific type of ethnicity, religion, etc. It also makes the acclimation and adjustment to new-comers difficult. If the locals dislike the new people, but dislike confrontation/conflict, they will use aggression, ethnic humor to make the non-locals feel inferior.

Against

However, based on the same article, ethnic humor could be considered a coping mechanism used to help locals acclimate to newcomers (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00123/full). Having new people enter their domain can cause issues, and humor can be considered their way of dealing with the changes, especially in the Western world. Americans, specifically, use humor to cope with situations they are uncomfortable in or affected by.

Conclusion

Based on Lillian Boxman-Shabtai and Limor Shifman’s article and Frontiers’ article, ethnic humor is a bad way to handle an uncomfortable situation where there may be conflict. While it could be a coping mechanism or a way to express their anger, it is still an unnecessary evil used to create separations in different groups of people.