What Being a Humanist Means
All my Bullying Left Me a Racist, But I Grew Out of It
Near the end of high school, comedian John Byner had a comedy show on one of our national Canadian networks called Bizarre. The show featured many now beyond inappropriate routines, one a regular skit called ‘the bigot family’. Every member was of different ethnicity. They would zing each other with ethnic slurs.
I’ve spoken here many times about my experiences of being bullied. With my small group of friends, because we were of many ethnic origins (all Caucasian, however) we reenacted the bigot family. I always did the Polish jokes.
A few years later I realized my bubby was from Poland, so I had Polish blood too.
Then and there, Polish jokes stopped from me.
As I’ve stated, I’m a humanist now. It took many years, but I’m finally there.
What does that mean?
I heard a great video on this. I can’t find it right now. I’ll paraphrase:
There’s only one race: human. A difference of skin pigment or facial features doesn’t change that.
Something that bugged me about F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was that they were supposed to be in Manhattan, but everyone was a wasp — except Janice, the sole Jew… who was just there for laughs. There were no Orthodox Jews, no Jamaicans, no other people of color… if you weren’t there for comedy, you didn’t exist.
There’s a guy in my current novel who uses all of the stereotypes of 1970s African American blacksploitation movies. He has an afro with a hair pick, he speaks Ebonics..
He’s Caucasian. It’s stuff to make his character memorable by the dichotomy. You laugh at him, not an ethnic group.
Not stereotyping a group for the sake of mocking them, but having them as a real part of the world… that’s a humanist approach.
There’s only one race: human. A difference of skin pigment or facial features doesn’t change that.
