Philips & Benatar

North American Philosophical Publications

Prejudice in Jest: When Racial and Gender Humor Harms Author(s): David Benatar Source: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 191-203 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441225 Accessed: 18-05-2017 00:16 UTC

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Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 13, Number 2, April 1999

PREJUDICE IN JEST: WHEN RACIAL AND

GENDER HUMOR HARMS

David Benatar

central questions in the sparse literature on the ethics of humor are: 1) What makes a piece of humor racist or sexist? 2) Are jokes

that embody negative racial and gender stereotypes necessarily racist and sexist? Because these issues have tended to be discussed separately it has not been noted that some answers to the first question render the second question moot. My answer to the first question does not have this effect. It will draw on an account of humor ethics that I provide and defend against rival views of racist (and sexist) humor. I shall then proceed to answering the second question.

An Account of Humor Ethics

How can humor be immoral? Briefly, the answer is that it is immoral where it is intended to harm people or where there are good grounds for expecting it to harm people, and where the harm in question is wrong- fully inflicted. Following Joel Feinberg, I understand harm in terms of negative effects on people's interests. However, my understanding of harm is, in two ways, broader than the one for which he opts in his work about the moral limits of the criminal law.1 Firstly, because in the cur- rent context I have a more expansive interpretation of what interests are, my understanding of harm includes what he calls hurts, offenses and other disliked states which are insufficiently severe to warrant be- ing termed harms for his purposes. Because I am concerned with the morality of humor rather than with the moral limits of legally restrict- ing it, the inclusion of less severe though nonetheless disliked states is more appropriate. Secondly, for Professor Feinberg, a harm is some- thing that is wrongfully inflicted. That definition is the desired one in interpreting the liberal harm principle, but the broader non-moral definition,

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according to which the expression "wrongfully inflicted harm" is not tautologous, is better suited to my undertaking.

Interests range in importance, but typically those upon which immoral humor infringes are interests in not being demeaned, insulted, shocked or disgusted. In themselves these interests are weaker ones on the scale of interest strengths, but in certain cases their infringement can lead to harms of a greater order of magnitude. This is especially so against a background of sustained prejudice and discrimination against certain groups. Demeaning or insulting jokes about members of these groups may cause more profound harm than if similar jokes were told about groups who have not suffered past discrimination. However, even when the harm is only mild this still provides prima facie moral reason against the activity which causes it.

The appeal of this account is that the connection is preserved be- tween the ethics of humor and an influential understanding of ethics generally. On this understanding, Tightness and wrongness is to be ex- plained in terms of benefits and harms to people (or other moral recipients). The problem, of course, is that harms and benefits usually have to be balanced against each other. This is why there is not a straight- forward correlation between harm and wrong and between benefit and good. Nevertheless it remains true that, according to the view being dis- cussed, right and wrong are understood in terms of benefit and harm.

The harm explanation of immoral humor, insofar as it relates to rac- ist and sexist humor, is similar to a view for which Michael Philips argues and which he calls an Act-Centered account2 of racism and racist hu-

mor. According to him the term "racist," when used in its logically primary sense, is applied to actions. Persons and beliefs are racist in a derivative sense. This is because racism must be understood in terms of

what it does to the victim. Since acts, the argument implies, are what are done to people, it is acts that are the logically primary application of the term racist." Any understanding of how persons or beliefs are racist must be derivative from this.

There is a subtle, but conceptually important, difference between the Act-Centered account and the account I have outlined. On my view X is wrong if, ceteris paribus, it harms. Now as a matter of fact, it is usually actions (broadly understood to include not only speech acts, facial ex- pressions, and other manifest relations between people but also some omissions) that benefit or harm. However, logically what is of impor- tance is not the act but the harm or benefit. It is this that makes for

Tightness and wrongness. If having beliefs or thoughts can harm and benefit others, then beliefs and thoughts are subject to moral evaluation in a non-derivative sense. We can certainly imagine a science fiction

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PREJUDICE IN JEST: RACIAL AND GENDER HUMOR 193

scenario in which mere mental states brought harm or benefit to others. Perhaps my hating somebody would sap his life even though I were care- ful to avoid any harmful actions. However, in pursuit of such imaginative examples we should not overlook a significant but mild and non-physi- cal harm which mere beliefs in fact do inflict. If I believe negative rumors about somebody, that person is harmed by my having the belief even if I fail to act on it (in the broad sense of acting outlined above). His reputa- tion is damaged. Similarly imagine that one is loathed by everybody one knows. Even if those who loath one never make their feelings known (verbally or via their actions) to either the object of their revulsion or to anybody else, the person who is held in contempt is harmed in an impor- tant way.3 This is so because we have interests not only in being treated with regard, but also in being well regarded. Damaged reputations or being viewed (even if not treated) with contempt adversely affect these interests and so constitute harms. Racists who view blacks, for example, as inferior beings, damage certain interests of blacks - interests in be- ing regarded as beings worthy of respect. Note here that a racist might treat with respect those whom he regards as contemptible, for reasons other than his actually having respect for them. Prudence is one reason. Social condemnation of racist talk and practice might be such that a racist does not give expression to his beliefs. Less sophisticated pru- dential considerations may sometimes also be operative, say where a white racist appears before a black judge or finds himself about to be operated upon by a black surgeon. The Act-Centered account does not take account of states of mind which harm.

There are a number of reasons why people may be unpersuaded by the argument that mere beliefs can harm in the way I have said. For one thing, they may doubt that we really have interests in being regarded independent of the effect this can have on how we are treated. That we have such interests is suggested by the preference most of us have for a world in which we were well regarded to a world in which, although we were treated as i/we were well regarded, we were not so regarded. Now it might be objected that we prefer this because we prefer not to be de- luded. Although I am inclined to think that this may provide a partial explanation for our preference for the one world over the other, our pref- erence for being well regarded seems to run deeper than this. This seems to be demonstrated by the fact that our preferences can vary in intensity depending on what kind of regard is at stake. Consider the scenario in which one has recently patented a new soft drink flavor and the bever- age is now commercially available. An acquaintance of one's hears of this and tries the drink. I suggest that one would prefer a world in which the acquaintance actually enjoys the drink to a world in which he merely

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acts as if he does. But it seems to me that one's preference here would not be as strong as it would be in a choice between a world in which one were regarded as a being worthy of respect and a world in which al- though one was treated as such, one was actually regarded as an unworthy and inferior being. The difference in intensity, I think, shows that the preference not to be misled cannot fully account for why we prefer the world in which we are well regarded to one in which people merely act as if we are. If the concern about delusion fully explained our prefer- ence, then I cannot see why our preferences in the two scenarios I described would differ in intensity. We stand to be deluded in both cases. The only difference is what we are deluded about, but that should not matter if we have no interest (than runs deeper than our concern about delusion) in how people regard us.

Another reason why people may doubt that mere beliefs can harm is that the harms inflicted purely by beliefs are minuscule in comparison with harms mediated by or resulting from actions, especially actions like lynchings, beatings, and enslavings. However, it cannot be inferred from the fact that the harms caused by beliefs are relatively mild that they are not harms at all. It is a mistake, I believe, to fail to distinguish small harms from the complete absence of harm.

A related reason why some people may be reluctant to accept that states of mind can harm is that they think that the mere presence of a harm makes something wrong. The worry then is that merely thinking badly of somebody may be immoral, even if it has no manifest effect upon him. However, this is not an implication of my view. On the under- standing of harm that I am employing, there is a difference between a harm and a wrong. Not all harms, understood as negative effects on in- terests, are wrongs. Sometimes a harm is justifiable, in which case it is not wrong. For example, sometimes the rumors we believe about people are true. On occasion people deserve our resentment or contempt. Even when the harm is not justified, however, there may be other reasons to preclude our terming it a wrong. For instance, harmful beliefs are often, to a greater or lesser extent, beyond our control. To the degree that they are, they cannot be wrongs, even if they are undesirable because they cause unjustified harms.

Among those beliefs that harm are racist (and sexist) beliefs. The contents of some such beliefs are negative stereotypes. Stereotyping in- volves viewing, judging, or regarding individuals not in their own right but in terms of a set of attributes they are presumed to have in virtue of their belonging to a group, where the group's essential features do not include the attributes in question. Although a stereotype is something that is "continued or constantly repeated without change"4 it is, in our

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PREJUDICE IN JEST: RACIAL AND GENDER HUMOR 195

ordinary (figurative) usage, not something that is necessarily applied in an exceptionless way. That is to say, although stereotypes are applied repeatedly and unchangingly they are not necessarily applied in every instance. Most of those who entertain stereotypes admit exceptions, even if they continue to measure the exception against the stereotype rule. (It is this that explains why statements like "Some of my best friends are Jews" can be true without constituting a defense against a charge of prejudice.) It is only the most ideological of racists whose prejudicial beliefs are held to be exceptionless. But a stereotype is more than merely a working generalization. As a form of prejudice it has a much stronger grip on the bearer's mind and is less easily overcome in instances where it clearly does not apply. It is for this reason, in part, that stereotypes are troubling even when they contain an element of truth, that is when they say something that is true of a significant proportion of the stereo- typed group. The stereotyper is heavily (though not invariably) disposed to attribute the stereotyped charactersitics to individual members of the group that lack those characteristics. And when the stereotyper does rec- ognize that an individual does not match the stereotype there is often an ongoing sense of anomaly - a troubling awareness of the difference be- tween the stereotype and the individual who is "meant" to fit it but is aberrant. Stereotypes may be positive - that is, characterize a group in some favorable way - but more often they are not. It is the negative ste- reotype that will concern me here.

Although racist beliefs harm, having such beliefs is not a sufficient condition for humor's being racist. In other words, I am not saying that a person's having racist beliefs is sufficient to make his jokes racist jokes. His racist beliefs might be unconnected with his jokes. Some of the jokes he tells may involve (negative) stereotypes other than those he endorses. When there is a connection between humor and racist beliefs - where

the jokes express racist beliefs - then one condition for racist humor is met. The condition is a sufficient, but not a necessary, one. That is to say, the fact that a joke expresses racist beliefs is enough to make it racist. That is because such expressions are harmful and on racial grounds. When told to people who are members of the group targeted by the joke, the harm is typically a feeling of hurt or degradation. The joke acts as a form of insult. But when I say that a joke expresses racist be- liefs I do not mean exclusively that it communicates such beliefs (to others). It can mean that, but jokes can be an expression of prejudice even when one is alone and, recalling a joke, one enjoys it inwardly.

That a joke expresses racist beliefs is sufficient to make it racist, but it is not necessary. Racial jokes can be harmful and racist even where they do not express racist beliefs. If renditions of jokes inculcate and

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spread racist views then they are harmful even if the person who tells them does not endorse the stereotypes embodied by them.

This explains in part why my view is not like another view which Michael Philips discusses - one he calls an Agent-Centered account of racist and sexist humor.5 According to such an account the essential fea- ture of a racist act is that it is performed by a racist, where a racist is understood as somebody who has racist beliefs. On this view, if it is true that a person has no racist beliefs then he cannot be described as a racist and it follows that his acts are not racist. In other words, accord-

ing to this view racist beliefs are a necessary condition for racism. If there are no racist beliefs there is no racism. On my view, there can be racism in the absence of racist beliefs. That is to say, racist beliefs are not a necessary condition for racism. However, having and expressing such beliefs are sufficient conditions for racism.

Are Negative Racial Jokes Necessarily Racist?

I shall distinguish racist and sexist humor from racial and gender humor. Racist and sexist humor are those forms of humor which are in-

tended to, or can reasonably be expected to, inflict harms on racial or gender grounds, where these harms are wrongful. The terms "racist" and "sexist" denote moral defectiveness. The terms "racial" and "gender" hu- mor denote no normative element. They refer to pieces of humor that turn on racial or gender stereotypes or images. The question I shall now tackle is whether negative racial and gender humor - humor embodying negative ra- cial and gender stereotypes and images - is necessarily racist and sexist.

A popular view among those who have written on the ethics of humor is that one cannot appreciate a joke embodying gender or racial stereo- types unless one shares those stereotypes. We cannot find a joke funny merely by imagining, for the purposes of the joke, that we share its preju- dicial assumptions. If we do not actually endorse them we cannot appreciate the joke. Because it is said that the prejudicial attitudes can- not be hypothetically adopted for the purpose of the joke, racist and sexist humor has been said to have this anhypothetical feature.6 It is a con- sequence of this view that negative racial or gender jokes are necessarily racist or sexist. This is because they necessarily express racist or sexist views. I shall argue that this view is mistaken - that we can enjoy racial and gender humor without actually endorsing the stereotypes they embody.

Note that the question of whether the mere appreciation of negative racial or gender jokes morally taints that appreciation arises only if one accepts my harm explanation over Michael Philips's Act-Centered ac- count of racist humor. On the Act-Centered account the appreciation of

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PREJUDICE IN JEST: RACIAL AND GENDER HUMOR 197

a joke cannot be morally tainted unless that appreciation is communi- cated to others or negatively affects how one treats others.

The anhypothetical feature is advanced partly as an intuitive datum.7 One author, Ronald de Sousa, acknowledges that against those who are unconvinced no knock-down argument can be advanced, but he appeals to some thought experiments to support the view.8 These center around the following joke:

Margaret Trudeau goes to visit the hockey team. When she emerges she complains that she has been gang-raped. Wishful thinking.

Now my problem with following the subsequent thought experiments is that I simply do not find the joke funny. One possible reason is that when I first read the joke I did not know who Margaret Trudeau was. However, even now that I have been informed that she is commonly regarded as being promiscuous, I still do not find the joke funny. I see its point, but it is not a good joke. The same is true if I substitute "Margaret Trudeau" with the name of a woman whom I do know is commonly regarded as being promiscuous. Even though I take the Trudeau joke to be a bad one, I shall discuss it and Professor de Sousa's treatment of it. This is because

I think it is important to respond to existing argument about the anhypothetical element in racial and gender humor, and this has focused on the Trudeau joke.9

Professor de Sousa will say that, to my credit, I fail to appreciate the Trudeau joke because I do not endorse the assumptions underlying the word "promiscuous" implicit in the context of this joke. He says that these assumptions are something like the following:

a) "rape is just a variant form of sexual intercourse."

b) "women's sexual desires are indiscriminate."

c) "there is something intrinsically objectionable or evil about a woman who wants or gets a lot of sex."10

I disagree that, as they stand, these are indeed assumptions of the joke. It is not my aim here to provide a full account of how to determine what the assumptions of a joke are - that is to say, how to decide exactly what a joke is about. That would require an extensive discussion that would take me well beyond the topic of this paper - the ethics of humor. In brief, however, I think that something is an assumption of a joke if at least part of the funniness of the joke is dependent on it. (But because a joke can please in more than one way - that is, because it can be funny for more than one reason - it is not necessarily true that without a particular assumption the joke must be unfunny.) The Margaret Trudeau

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joke does not, as Professor de Sousa claims, make assumptions about all women. If it did, then any woman's name could be substituted, without cost, for Margaret Trudeau' s. But, in fact, it is crucial to the joke that the woman mentioned be taken to be promiscuous. Perhaps some people who enjoy the joke make these assumptions about all women, but that is not what the joke requires. The joke turns only on the more restricted assumption. Furthermore, it is relevant that the men who are said to have raped the promiscuous woman are putative icons of masculinity, not wimpy or decrepit men. Thus, both a) and b) must be modified to reflect accurately the implicit assumptions:

a') For promiscuous women, rape is just a variant form of sexual intercourse.

b') Promiscuous women's sexual desires for macho men are indiscriminate.

Although these are assumptions of the joke, this does not make them true. They are false. Promiscuity does not entail absolute sexual indiscriminateness. Promiscuity is a matter of degree. One can be promiscuous without wanting to have sex with just anybody (or even any sexually attractive person) and at any time.

In support of his anhypothetical claim, Professor de Sousa asks us to imagine either of two variants on the joke. One is that some non-sexual form of assault is substituted for rape. Alternatively we can substitute some man who is not assumed to be homosexual and is not the object of any particularly hostile attitude. In both cases we are told that the hu- mor would be lost.

I think that we can explain why the humor might be lost by the first change. The joke is about promiscuity. Given that promiscuity is a sexual concept, changing the assault to a non-sexual form would lose the con- nection with promiscuity. The appropriate incongruity would vanish. If this is so, then Ronald de Sousa's explanation for why the humor is lost fails to establish the conclusion for which he argues. It is not, as he says, that we must endorse the assumption to find the joke funny. Rather, it is that the assumption (whether endorsed or not) makes the sexual element essential to the joke's funniness. To obviate this problem we could alter the promiscuous component as well. Then, if whatever hu- mor the Trudeau joke has was not preserved, Professor de Sousa's argument would be vindicated. However, I am not convinced that the humor would be lost. I can imagine attempts at non-sexual humor that would have the same form as the Trudeau joke (although I doubt that they would be any funnier). Imagine, for example, McCarthy's claiming

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PREJUDICE IN JEST: RACIAL AND GENDER HUMOR 199

that America's problems were attributable to the stranglehold which the communists have over the country. A political satirist might well say that this was "wishful thinking" - both because it would be a simplistic diagnosis of the cause of complex social problems and because of McCarthy's personal interest in having communists (real or imagined) to expose.

What if we pursue Ronald de Sousa's second thought experiment and alter the sex of the butt of the joke? I think that whatever humor there is in the Trudeau joke could be preserved, or even enhanced. Imagine that James Bond was taken captive by a squad of exquisitely beautiful women and that when he escaped he complained to his superiors that he had been forced to engage in serial sexual intercourse with them. This may strike us as humorous given Bond's well-known promiscuity. There would be an incongruity between Bond's promiscuous reputation and his complaints about unwanted sexual activity. But, why should we think that Bond enjoyed this anymore than we think a promiscuous woman enjoys being raped?

Following Ronald de Sousa, we might say that the propositions that constitute the assumptions of this scene are:

a") For promiscuous men, being forced to have sex is just a variant form of sexual intercourse;

b") Promiscuous men 's sexual desires for exquisitely beautiful women are indiscriminate; and

c') There is something intrinsically objectionable or evil about a man who wants and gets a lot of sex.

Given that humor, like the Bond scene, that assumes a"), b") and c'), can be at least as funny as humor, like the Trudeau joke, that assumes a'), b') and c), it seems that Ronald de Sousa's claim, that the Trudeau joke and its assumptions are sexist, is false.

Suppose that Professor de Sousa concedes that his thought experi- ments fail to establish anhypothetical sexist premises. He might still insist that a') and b') and c), although not sexist, must be endorsed for the joke to be funny. He might say, in other words, that the choice of joke was a bad example because it turns out not to be a case of anhypothetical sexist beliefs. Nevertheless, he might add, my deliberations so far have failed to disprove the anhypothetical feature of some humor. If some humor is anhypothetical then if another joke has truly sexist premises (unlike the Trudeau joke), those premises would have to be endorsed for the joke to be appreciated. I shall now counter this possible objection by arguing against the anhypothetical nature of racist and sexist humor.

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Professor de Sousa's argumentative strategy is to ask us to engage in various thought experiments about jokes and see whether we find the result funny. I want to employ this kind of argument to show that one can find a joke funny without sharing the underlying stereotype. The problem is that no single thought experiment will make the point as strongly as possible for everybody. The reason is that the best way to establish my point is for a person to consider a gender or ethnic joke that turns on a stereotype which the person knows he or she does not share. Although some people are well attuned to their psychological dynamics and can determine when they have and do not have prejudices, such acuity may be doubted by the subject himself or disputed by oth- ers. One can be most sure of the absence of a prejudice when one is a member of the sex, ethnic group, or race about which the prejudice is held. Of course, even here one can never be certain that one does not

share the prejudice and that one is not suffering from self-hate. How- ever, it would be a mistake to infer from this epistemic uncertainty that whenever one enjoys a joke embodying a stereotype that one shares the stereotype. That would be to stipulate that enjoyment of jokes embody- ing stereotypes constitutes an endorsement of the stereotype. The argument for the anhypothetical nature of racial and gender humor would then be both circular and unfalsifiable.

The project then for each person is to determine whether he or she enjoys a joke that turns on a negative stereotype about his or her own sex, ethnic group, or race.

Consider the following as an example:

Question: Why do Jewish men like to watch pornographic movies backwards?

Answer: They like to see the prostitute giving the money back afterwards.

I know that I enjoy jokes such as this which incorporate negative Jewish stereotypes (such as Jewish miserliness) even though I am as confident as possible that I do not share the stereotypes. This suggests to me that one can hypothetically accept stereotypes for the purposes of a joke and find the joke funny.

A reasonable objection to this is that I could not hypothetically apply the stereotype to just any ethnic or racial group for the purposes of the joke (although I probably could apply it to some other groups). Imagine that the above joke had been about English men. The humor would be lost, even if I were told that, for the purposes of the joke, I should as- sume that the English are miserly. To understand why this is so we need to distinguish between i) merely stipulating a stereotype, ii) recognizing a

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stereotype, and iii) actually endorsing a stereotype. It is true that the incongruous elements of a joke, whether or not any of them are stereo- types, cannot merely be stipulated. A joke which is preceded by an explicit stipulation of assumptions is too contrived to please. This is especially so when we are aware of the group regarding which the ste- reotype is stipulated and the stereotype runs counter to prevailing stereotypes about that group. But endorsing a stereotype is not the only alternative to merely stipulating it. Recognition of the stereotype is suf- ficient for the joke to be enjoyed. This recognition is what facilitates a hypothetical acceptance of the stereotype.

There are two senses in which a stereotype can be recognized. The most obvious is where one is previously aware of the stereotype and thus some newly encountered instance of it is familiar to one. A less obvious sense is where, although one is not antecedently aware of the stereotype, on encountering a manifestation of it one perceives it as the stereotype that it is. It is for this reason that one can sometimes enjoy ethnic jokes even when one has never even heard of the ethnic group in question. Consider the following humor:

Question: Why do Arhusians have so many scars round their mouths on Mondays?

Answer: Because they practice eating with a knife and fork on Sundays.

I appreciated this humorous riddle even though, prior to reading it, I had never heard of the Arhusians, and I still do not know who they are. This suggests that it may simply be the cleverness of an ethnic joke that we often find funny. Nevertheless, I think that the enjoyment is usually likely to be less than in those cases where one was previously aware of the stereotype.

The joke about Jewish men watching pornographic movies backwards is as funny as it is because I encounter the joke knowing that there is the stereotype that Jews are tightfisted. I suspect that were one not aware of this stereotype, one would not find the joke as funny. And, in the ab- sence of any recognition of the stereotype, mere stipulation of the stereotype would not make the joke funny. If over the course of time one were to be told a number of jokes employing this stereotype then the stereotype would become familiar to one and one would recognize it (in the obvious sense of "recognize" mentioned above). I suggest that this recognition would usually happen in a far shorter space of time than it would take to come to endorse the stereotype. My argument for this again appeals to personal introspections, in the way that Professor de Sousa's arguments do.

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My grandmother, Suzette Benatar, told me a few Johar jokes when I was a child. Johar is the fool in the humor of the Jewish community in Turkey where she grew up. As I was unfamiliar with the character of Johar, the jokes were not very funny at first. However, after hearing a few more Johar jokes over time, I became familiar with the character- ization of Johar as fool and, recognising this in further Johar jokes, found them much funnier. I have subsequently attempted to establish whether there are ethnic overtones to Johar jokes. As far as I can tell there are not - at least my grandmother is not aware of any - but imagine that my inquiries had revealed that there were such overtones. Obviously that would not show that I shared the ethnic stereotypes all along. This is born out by my experience of van der Merwe jokes which are the staple South African joke. Van der Merwe is the idiot of South African humor. I enjoyed these jokes for years before realizing that there were ethnic overtones. Van der Merwe is an Afrikaner surname and in some senses

van der Merwe is the Afrikaner stereotype, but the jokes became no more enjoyable once I became aware of this.11 One final example is that of the JAP (Jewish American Princess). The stereotype of the JAP as frigid was, until a few years ago, unknown to me. Moreover, it directly contra- dicts other stereotypes of Jewish women, namely that they are over-sexed. It was not long before I came to appreciate the jokes, again by recogniz- ing the stereotype, not endorsing it. From the above reflections it can be concluded that we need not endorse gender and racial stereotypes in or- der to appreciate humor that turns on them. Racial and gender jokes do not necessarily express prejudice and thus are not necessarily morally defective. That my argument has been directed to establishing this reas- suring but very limited conclusion should not obscure the unpleasant fact that racial and gender humor often do express, inculcate, or rein- force prejudice, or cause people to be insulted or demeaned.12

University of Cape Town

NOTES

1. Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 34-36. See also, "Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming," in Joel Feinberg, Freedom and Fulfilment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 3-4.

2. Michael Philips, "Racist Acts and Racist Humor," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1 (March 1984): 76ff.

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PREJUDICE IN JEST: RACIAL AND GENDER HUMOR 203

3. The fact that the object of contempt does not know about it is not in itself an indication that he is not harmed. See Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others, pp. 86-87.

4. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1973.

5. Michael Philips, p. 76.

6. Ronald de Sousa' s term. See his "When is it Wrong to Laugh?" in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, ed. John Morreall (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 241.

7. Ronald de Sousa says: We "intuitively know that sharing these assumptions is what would enable us to find it funny" in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, p. 240.

8. Ibid.

9. Another writer who has followed Professor de Sousa' s lead in citing the Trudeau joke and endorsing his claims about its anhypothetical nature is Merrie Bergman, "How Many Feminists Does it Take to Make a Joke? Sexist Humor and What's Wrong with It," Hypatia 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986). Claudia Mills, although she does not discuss the Trudeau joke, seems to endorse the views of Professors de Sousa and Bergman. See Claudia Mills, "Racist and Sexist Jokes: How Bad are They (Really)?" Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy 7, no. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 1987).

10. Ronald de Sousa, p. 239.

1 1 . It is interesting to note that despite the racially oppressive nature of Apartheid (or perhaps because of it), van der Merwe was far more frequently the butt of jokes than were blacks, at least in English-speaking circles.

12. I am grateful to Noël Carroll for encouraging and valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Marty Perlmutter, together with whom I have enjoyed many laughs, was a willing reader whose suggestions helped me to improve the paper. My thanks also go to anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks, and to my colleague Laurence Goldstein for his interest and comments.

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