Friday, March 10, 2017

Return to Gray

Reasons why Aaron isn't Black Enough, number 23,695.

I saw this, and my first reaction was to burst out laughing. Fortunately, I have my own office where I work, so I didn't bother my coworkers. I think that this is funny and clever. And yes, I understand why some people are offended by it. But no, I don't think that it's objectively bad. I'm not going to be "that guy," the one who runs around telling people to "lighten up," or "have a sense of humor." Because you can consider this to be the worst thing ever done to beer and still be the life of the party. But I do become kind of annoyed when things like this are cast as being about race and ethnicity, rather than about the individuals involved. What we find offensive, or not, is about who we are as people, and not the color of our skin. I happen to take Black Lives Matter seriously, and still find this to uproariously funny. It's hard for me to avoid chuckling as I type this.

But on the flip side, I understand that there are people who feel that the joke is on them, and they're being undermined. That the dead are being mocked, and that centuries of pain are being ignored. I don't know whether or not that was the intent. Honestly, I don't know if it matters. I became at peace with the idea that some percentage of humanity simply wasn't going to like me, for some reason or another, on sight some time ago. I find I enjoy life more that way.

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