A Discussion of Satire

For anyone who doesn't know, the Colbert report posted a satirical tweet. In case you haven't seen it,here's a screencap(he has deleted it)

This tweet inspired a lot of strong feelings,both pro and against. For me,i believe Colbert was trying to make fun of Snyder for his ridiculous defense of using the "redskin" name, and not intentionally trying to hurt Asian-Americans. To me this was a well intentioned attempt at satire that came out wrong.

The main reason is because of the power dynamics. As a straight white dude, you are pretty much at the top of the totem pole in America,while Asian Americans are less so. Hence its very hard for the former to make jokes about the latter that don't come off oppressive,even if that isn't the intent.

To expand on that,i think its possible to be a perfectly good person and make mistakes,because we're human. Sometimes we don't know realize how our words/actions come off. To illustrate, there was a time i said something offensive to a Asian friend without realizing. When i was informed of how i fucked up, i apologized to said friend and we still keep in contact.

So to me, that experience taught me 2 things. First is that generally when a marginalized group are telling your actions were problematic,its better to just listen and apologize. Sure some may continue to hold a grudge,but i feel most will probably forgive if they get a genuine apology. Secondly, it instilled in me a belief that society as a whole would make a lot more progress on various ism issues if we learned to listen to criticism instead of dismissing it.

Related to that,i think we need to have real discussion about who gets to claim benefit of the doubt/satire when jokes go wrong.  I think we all remember the backlash MHP got(and still received even after apologizing), and recently another prominent black woman got attacked on twitter for satirizing herself. So i do think more marginalized groups don't seem to get that same benefit of the doubt when it comes to comedy which is a problem. This kinda relates to my main point,which is the context of who has more power is the main issue here.

Also, the creator of the #CancelColbert hashtag who happens to be a Asian Women has gotten rape/death threats over this,along with people ridiculing her name. So there is a issue of how people who say they aren't racist will sink down to that level if a POC says something they don't like.