I just read Z.Z. Packer’s short story, “The Ant of the Self,” and want to quote the following exchange, in which some old guys in a bar ask the young male protagonist why he says he felt ‘relieved’ to attend the Million Man March:
I try to think. ‘I don’t know. I’m the only black kid in my class. Like a fucking mascot or something,’ I say, surprised that I said the f-word out loud, but shaking my head as though I said words like that every day. ‘I just get tired of it. You skip it for a day and it feels like a vacation. That’s why I was glad.’
There’s a round of nodding. Not sympathy, just acknowledgment.
‘Man,’ the guy with the goiter says, ‘I’m happy to hear that. You got the luxury of feeling tired. Back in the day, before you were born, couldn’t that type of shit happen.’
He seems to be saying less than he means, and looks at me, his eyes piercing, his goiter looking like he’s swallowed a lightbulb. ‘We the ones fought for you to be in school with the white folks.’ He looks behind him, as if checking if any white people are around, though that’s about as likely as Ray Bivens Jr. going sober. He lowers his voice so that he sounds almost kind. ‘We sent you to go spy on them. See how the hell those white folks make all that money! Now you talking ’bout a vacation!’
The man with the goiter is right, of course, but I think the boy is right, too. Things are always better than they used to be, and things can always be better. It seems like most people get to a certain age, and expect everything to stop where it is. They think the world is done, and get aggravated that younger people still aren’t happy. It’s like they expect the new generation to just sit around ruminating on the great work the previous generation accomplished. But each generation has its own work to do.
People are never going to stop moving, pushing forward, and wanting more and better. Society is not perfectible, so we’ll always have something to work on, and work we should. And if somehow society did manage to perfect itself, well, we’d probably have to fuck it up again to give everyone something to do. It’s the job of young people to zero in on ways in which our society is falling short, and pick at it non-stop.
Of course, I don’t myself work for change in any way. But I think everybody else ought to. I’m too busy complaining.
Although what some might call ‘complaining,’ I like to think of as ‘calling a spade a spade.’ And really, as bad a rep as complaining gets, change doesn’t entirely come from revolutions (and revolutions can’t be called out of nothing). Change mostly comes from hard work, but on a smaller scale, it also comes from nagging, bitching and whining. Change comes from being humorless. Change comes from pointing out a shortcoming over and over and over again, until nobody can ignore it. We all hate whiners, but where people won’t give money or volunteer time, they will whine and bitch and moan at everyone around them. And eventually, like water dripping on stone, that constant nagging shapes the thing it chafes against. The simplest example I can think of is lazy, hateful humor, based on stupid stereotypes. This stuff used to kill (at unmixed parties), because it didn’t require a genius to think up or understand. But then people started whining about it, saying it was hateful and not funny. It took a long time, but now those jokes fall flat as farts, so no one tells them anymore.
Which brings me to this Clint Eastwood (him again?) quote (linked to by Ann Althouse):
“You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth otherwise you will be insulted as a racist. I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a ‘Sam the Jew’ or ‘José the Mexican’ – but we didn’t think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don’t want to be politically correct. We’re all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything.”
Well, but, you know who also wouldn’t find ‘Jose the Mexican’ jokes particularly funny (other than Mexicans)? The ancient Greeks. Or Eskimo. Or 19th century Brits. Jokes are only funny insofar as they are timely. And these old race-based gems don’t kill anymore because, first of all, they’re tired, and second of all, they no longer reflect most people’s reality. I know a lot of people who are Jewish or Hispanic, but I don’t think of that as somehow hilariously noteworthy, or the central thing about them. If there’s more than one Jewish person in your circle, how do you decide which one gets known as “the Jew”? A “Jose the Mexican” joke depends on Jose being the only Mexican you know. I think these “jokes” depend on an unfamiliarity that no longer exists. Nowadays, it’s unlikely that everybody at your party will look exactly like you.
But people who still tell these jokes think that secretly, everybody thinks they’re hilarious; it’s just that everyone’s too scared to laugh. Riiiiiiight.
You know who are never P.C.? Comics. Sure, on TV and in movies, everybody has a whole list of topics they can’t touch to avoid alienating any one of dozens of advertising sponsors, but if you go to live comedy clubs, you’ll hear all sorts of jokes about every race, ethnicity, social group and class. But (some of) these jokes are funny, because they are relevant, and they reflect a reality of how people are really living now, and the assumptions that people make about each other. If the jokes are smart and hit home, people laugh.
At a certain point, if everyone has stopped laughing at your ‘Jose the Mexican’ joke, you have to blame the joke. Not the crowd.
