A Joke Every Day - 142 - UCLA vs. Oberlin

Title:
A Joke Every Day - 142 - UCLA vs. Oberlin

Description:
Another joke to do with race and identity. I think this is a recurring thing for me because my father was a Jew from Argentina and yet all through my life people have just sort of taken me to be white as driven snow. So on the one hand I was (and am) considered totally white by most people who know me, but at the same time whenever I visit my extended family, half of them don't even really speak english (some live in Argentina and speak spanish some live in Israel and speak hebrew, some immigrated to the US like my dad). So I don't feel "not white" per se, I certainly haven't had to deal with the kind of 'special attention' that most black or hispanic people receive from society and authority in particular, and yet I also don't feel "white" in the traditional sense of the way people use the word to mean anglo-saxon american either. At the same time, I do think that what we call race goes deeper than just skin tone, the simplest examples being the higher rate of IBS in Eastern European Jews or Cardiac disease in people of African American descent (peoples from warmer climates are also typically more likely to be lactose intolerant because they got their vitamin D from the sun whereas people from colder climates had to get it from milk). It is politically incorrect to suggest that race is anything more than a matter of pigmentation, but for better or worse I feel a greater responsibility to try to understand the facts of the matter more than to be liked by everyone. Now of course a lot of the facts are still out, since not a lot of comprehensive research has been done on this (because it is hard to get funding for anything that, whether fairly or not, has a whiff of eugenics to it), but I think there is enough evidence that race does exist in some form that I have trouble accepting it when people keep insisting that it's just a matter of perception and social construct, something which was said a lot at Oberlin, and I think reflects the continued impact of postmodernist thought on the Liberal Arts. Anyway, I hope that anyone who reads this can see that although I do have an interest in topics that are racial, I'm can hardly be accused of being racist. The only thing I could be justly accused of having a low tolerance for is for assertions which seem not only naively presumptive, but which actually fly in the face of the best scientific evidence we have; essentially anti-intellectualism masquerading as progressive thought. Also, the joke is just a joke. Bruins and Obies alike: Please don't steal my jokes. They're not files, and this isn't Direct Connect (ok, so maybe I've been out of college for too long, what the hell do you guys use for song stealing these days? :-D)

Author:
MikeBlejer

Tags:
Mike, Michael, Blejer, comedy, stand-up, comedian, jokes, Oberlin, UCLA, LA, los, angeles, race, racial, racist, xerox, paper, colored, College,