CURRENT EVENTS — NOVEMBER

BoonetheAiredale said:
Not to pour pure oxygen on a small flame, but how is the joke racist? The use of curry is a double entendre, but what's the worst, "racist" connection?
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Long answer:
To collapse the hundreds (if not thousands) of different cuisines of the subcontinent down into a single "dish" that has not ever really existed as a discrete dish and is a legacy of colonial misunderstanding and rote simplification and gutting of what are an infinite number of nuanced and highly specific spice blends to a single externally imposed term "curry" is offensive.

Short Answer:
Noting wrong with fired chicken or watermelon, then ask yourself why is it offensive (or more accurately, racist) to associate those foods with black people?
 
StrangePackage said:
Leave the racist jokes to the professionals and right wing reactionaries.
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I've been thinking about this and how to approach it. It's something all of us need to think about when we're trying to win back the middle. This is where the Republicans get traction on us. Take the statement I made in a vacuum with all the circumstances the same but with the main protagonist unspecified. Would it be either off topic or in error or the word choice questionable?

Yeah, I knew what I was doing and I knew I was walking a thin line. I will take to heart those who object. I would ask some consideration for the point of view that everything that can be construed to be about gender/race, etc. is or is negative if it is. In this specific incident, the only way race had any thing to do with it was it suggested a possible word choice. I don't get the negative connotations. Help me out.
 
The “joke” was tasteless. Which is ironic because curries are full of flavor.

It’s the kinda joke that would mostly be met with audible groans and silence in a club, but no comic is making a hack joke like that these days. It could only possibly work in a Michael Scott in The Office making everyone uncomfortable way.

No point in spending more time on it. Do better.
 
Molotov Mocktail said:
The “joke” was tasteless. Which is ironic because curries are full of flavor.

It’s the kinda joke that would mostly be met with audible groans and silence in a club, but no comic is making a hack joke like that these days. It could only possibly work in a Michael Scott in The Office making everyone uncomfortable way.

No point in spending more time on it. Do better.
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I hear other people's opinion, and I suspect I'll be on the losing end of this whole argument, but I'd say I read this as a dad joke, where it was easy to use the correct idiomatic phrase (looked it up) "curry favor" and have it attached to a unique identifying personal characteristic. Are we are allowed to jokingly make fun of his looks, but not some other generalized signifier? Again, I read it as a dad joke that was meant to be an easy, near groan inducing, throwaway joke (on a message board). BUT...I'll stand down and recognize a newer sensibility these days. Finesse, I'll sip on some bourbon and ponder our old-man-ness.
 
Molotov Mocktail said:
The “joke” was tasteless. Which is ironic because curries are full of flavor.

It’s the kinda joke that would mostly be met with audible groans and silence in a club, but no comic is making a hack joke like that these days. It could only possibly work in a Michael Scott in The Office making everyone uncomfortable way.

No point in spending more time on it. Do better.
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A large part of my point was that it actually was not a joke nor did I intend it that way. I phrased it as neutrally and accurately as possible wondering if it would actually get what I consider a kneejerk reaction.
 
Here’s a nicely nuanced overview on the topic of “curry” from The Soul of Spice, a (highly recommended) Indian cookbook I’ve got laying around:

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I think at the end of the day, as Americans, we are less attuned to the connotation of “curry” being used to denigrate people of South Asian decent than, say folks in Britain. But, that’s the trick, even if we personally don’t pick up on it, the people it’s been used to denigrate are absolutely aware of it, which is why it’s incumbent on us to keep learning and expanding our awareness. I think it’s helpful to frame it less as policing vocabulary, and more as being empatheticly aware of others experiences.
 
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It really is an interesting inflection point, as the term "curry favor" is a term I consider neutral in relation to ethnic groups. But, if the neutral term is used in relation to an ethnic group where some part of the word group has connotations AND the receiver of said words interprets that statement as less than necessary IS the statement less than some other term? Again, we can and do talk about his looks with seemingly less discomfort, but when an interpretated ethnic connotation is applied then things get "messy"? I don't have clear answers, but am curious about exploring what the "rules" are about such language use.
 
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