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Comment by mattacular | Hacker News Reader

Your white son is at the bottom of the pack because he can't openly tell bigoted jokes about his peers?

I don't understand this intentional misreading of comments that's so pervasive. Even if they're not entirely clear, you can usually deduce what they mean.

Why is his son singled out based on his skin color and unable to do things that his peers are officially sanctioned by the school? Not sure what that sounds ok to you? That seems like regular ole racism to me. That's a bit insane don't you think?

You lost me at this:

> officially sanctioned by the school

You interpret the anecdote as involving something official? I interpreted it as pertaining to social norms being enforced by only the students themselves. Kids hassling each other for "playing nonexistent white/straight/male cards" or "playing a card they don't have" is quite different from authority figures imposing equivalent policies. I mean, on some level the subject of the enforcement is in a similar position regardless of the nature of the enforcement, but we should at least agree on what we're dealing with here.

People tell stories on hackernews. If you don't take the story to be true, take it as hypothetical value. Not everything on the internet needs a scientific study to be discussed.

I'm confused. Perhaps some threads got crossed because I didn't mean to say anything about the truth or verification of the story.

I would think the existence of an inherently inequal standard here, and/or the idea of watering down the impact of harmful speech, is the problem more than wanting some perverse privilege to tell bigoted jokes. When and where I grew up I still remember black leaders critical of hip-hop for trying to normalise the n-word - the view being it was objectionable for anyone to launder the term.

In all seriousness, I think the freedom to tell (and receive) bigoted jokes as a youth was an integral part of my maturation.

Why?

Not OP, but the processing of learning that being X isn't a joke in and of itself taught me respect for other groups. You compare the joke about being gay vs a joke that someone is gay. One is a funny commentary on the gay experience, and the other is homophobic. Learning that difference, through experience help teach me where to draw the line between appreciating other cultures and cultural appropriation. And yeah a lot of these lessons can be taught other ways, but I have often found experience to be the best teacher. We should encourage kids to discover better morals and not just follow the morals they are taught. We learned a lot over the past century letting kids do that, we shouldn't stop now. The youngest generation has constantly shown the older how to be more accepting of neighbors, and kinder to our friends.

if you are unwilling to make a joke about someone, you do not believe they are your equal. it is really that simple

Because everyone dies in the end

Yes, others can tell bigoted jokes, or joke around in a bigoted manner, where he cannot.

He is saying that the gay kid can make bigoted jokes about arabs to an extent.

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