The death of ethnic humor

After Muslims "energetically" protested cartoons about themselves, the attack on humor seems to have gained a new lease on life.  As the episode below illustrates, any jokes at the expense of a minority come under huge attack and are rapidly censored.

The story below concerns jokes about Australian Aborigines, a group of  people virtually unknown outside Australia. Ethnic jokes of course center on characteristics widely ascribed to the group concerned so non-Australians would simply be puzzled by most of the jokes.

Nonetheless there was a worldwide pile-on to the jokes concerned by the Left-dominated media, resulting in the jokes being taken down by Facebook, their host.

To assist informed debate, I think I need to give examples of what was censored.  Via a Google image search, I have recovered some of the cartoons but putting them up would be futile as any image host would undoubtedly take them down again.  So what I will do is reproduce just some of the texts without the accompanying illustrations.

Back in my day meth was a drink

Methylated spirits is ethyl alcohol with a small amount of poisonous methyl alcohol added, akin to rubbing alcohol in the USA. It is used for cleaning etc. but Aborigines have been known to drink it for a cheap high.

"I think we're out of petrol" says white car driver.  Aboriginal in back seat says "Sorry"

Petrol is gasoline.  Petrol-sniffing is a pervasive form of  substance abuse among young Aborigines

"Sense of ownership is so white".  Complains when white folk take his land

Both those things have been said by Aboriginal activists as convenience suits

"Been here 40 thousand years.  Invented a stick"

Aborigines were still very primitive when white men arrived.

Oh!  You're Aboriginal.  Please tell me more about how I'm a white c*nt"

Words put into the mouth of a white comedian.  Aborigines are in general exceptionally polite but such utterances can be heard from Aboriginal activists, who in general have only a small amount of Aboriginal ancestry

As almost any evening  of viewing TV advertisements will show you, it is perfectly permissible  to mock white men as stupid, clumsy etc. so why not mock other groups in similar ways?  Why the double standard?  Answer:  There is no standard.  The Leftist aim is to  tear everyone down a similar low level and anything goes in pursuit of that.  And the media are solidly onboard with that discriminatory aim.

An excerpt from one of the media reports follows:

Facebook exploded yesterday, with users angrily reporting a page called "Aboriginal Memes" that makes racist "jokes" about Australia's indigenous people.

The page, which has over 4000 Likes, shows pictures of Aboriginal people with supposedly "funny" captions that reference petrol and begging.

In spite of reports pouring in from angry users, though, Facebook's response was to do just enough to show that it doesn't actually care.

After 5pm GMT +10, Facebook started emailing reporters with the following message:

Thanks for your recent report of a potential violation on Facebook. After reviewing your report, we were not able to confirm that the specific page you reported violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

However, the Facebook Community Standards document clearly states:

Facebook does not permit hate speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events and practices, it is a serious violation to attack a person based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.

At approximately 9.30pm GMT +10, Facebook removed any posts linking to the page, and the page itself disappeared — only to reappear around two hours later, with its name changed to "[Controversial Humor] Aboriginal Memes". [And that is down now too]

More HERE

Note that the jokes were NOT in breach of Facebook rules in that no individual was targeted.