Jokes That Express Racist Beliefs: David Benatar’s Account of Harm in Racist Beliefs and the Expression of Those Beliefs Through Humor >>> Sam Lawless In his article Prejudice in Jest: When Racial and Gender Humor Harms, David Benatar argues that a joke is immoral when it harms and when that harm is wrongfully inflicted. One way a joke harms, for Benatar, is when the joke expresses a racist belief. The racist belief is harmful, and so the expression of that belief is harmful. However, not all racist beliefs are wrongs; that is, not all harms of racist beliefs are wrongfully inflicted. Benatar states briefly that a harmful belief may be “beyond one’s control” and hence not wrong. He does not explain this point, even though it yields a troubling consequence; if a racist belief is beyond one’s control then it is not wrong, and the expression of that belief through a joke is not wrong. In this essay, I offer an explanation that allows one to reasonable say that a harmful belief, such as a racist belief, is not wrong when it is beyond one’s control. Briefly, a belief may be beyond one’s control because of how it was formed, perhaps through socialization or moral education in childhood, and this yields a type of innocence in the belief that causes it to not be wrong. Although, I argue that the relevant historical and cultural facts of a racist belief yield the harm to be profound. Furthermore, I argue that the profound harm caused by racist beliefs outweighs an innocence in the belief, concluding that racist beliefs are wrong. Consequently, a joke that expresses a racist belief that causes profound harm is wrong. Benatar’s Argument for How Humor is Immoral Here, a brief explanation for how a joke is immoral for Benatar will be explained. A joke 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 wrongfully inflicted”1. To harm, for Benatar, is to negatively affect one’s interest. Some interests we have include not being insulted or demeaned. So if a joke insults us, then the joke has negatively affected our interest hence it is harmful. If the joke insulted us wrongfully, then the joke is immoral, or wrong. One may be troubled to think that an insult may not be wrong, but we can imagine interactions with a close friend in which friendly insulting jokes are thrown in a way that is humorous to both people. The joke may harm, but it is not wrong. It is important, for Benatar and this essay, that the notions of harm and being wrong remain separate, but in some ways connected. That is, the notion of a joke harming involves negatively affecting one’s interest while the notion of a joke being wrong involves harm caused by the joke and that harm being wrongfully inflicted.
Aegis 2015
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