Racism stems mostly from fear: fear of what you do not know, of what you’ve heard or seen second hand, or fear based on over generalizations. Either way, you are not seeing people as who they are but through the eyes of fear. And because you hate the feeling of fear, you transfer that hate to the people you fear thinking they are the cause of your fear.
Humor can be used to diffuse fear. You can think of it in two ways…
1) If you sense fear arising within you, you can strive to first see if you can trigger your sense of humor.
– Is there anything that you can make light of or is this really a do or die situation?
– If you aren’t in immediate danger, than the humor perspective will help you perceive the situation more clearly. It will help you evaluate what you see without the veil of fear – without the impulse of hate.
2) Second, if you’re in the middle of a tense situation or between parties with racially motivated emotions, you can inject humor that appeals to all parties. If it appeals to both parties what it does is also diffuse the tension, but it does that because if shows that both parties aren’t as dissimilar as they feel they are. Humor shows them that they have shared meaning. In this small instant of the joke, both share the same world view, the same perspective.
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