If we can’t eliminate racism, can we at least make it ironic?
Have you ever had a friend tweet something ostensibly racist, and you’re not sure whether or not he’s being ironic? And then someone retweets him, and you’re not sure whether that person’s being ironic? It’s awkward, right? Well, why not take that awkwardness as a learning opportunity: if we can’t eliminate racism, maybe we can make it ironic!
Give it a try. Next time your friend tweets something offensive about a particular racial group, just respond with your own racist statement—but make it absurd! For example, if someone tweets something racist, try responding, “Yeah! And Canadians are bad in bed!” That’s funny, because not only are Canadians not really a “race,” they’re not really bad in bed. (At least, not judging by my ex-girlfriend from Vancouver Island.) So everyone will assume you and your friend are being ironic. Win!
When the racism is in the form of an action rather than just a statement, rendering it ironic gets trickier. For example, what if you overhear someone saying that he didn’t hire a job applicant because people of that race are lazy? What you can do is say, “Yeah, I’m going to fire my tax guy! He’s from that same ‘lazy’ race—and also, he smokes American Spirits, which is racist against Native Americans.” See how you just took it up a level and made the whole situation ironic and post-modern? (Of course, you will actually have to follow through and fire your tax guy—so hopefully he actually is lazy, because otherwise that would suck for you.)
When irony gets really tricky is when the racism escalates to an outright hate crime. For example, what do you do when an immigrant family in your neighborhood has a brick thrown through their window? That’s scary, but here’s an idea: try creating a conceptual art project where people pay you $50 each to dedicate bricks to people they ironically “admire”—as in, they “admire” Mel Gibson for his “honesty”—and then you take those bricks and throw them through random windows all over town. That way, every brick thrown in your town becomes, by default, an ironic brick.
When racism becomes “racism,” we all “win.”