"Should a person stop someone from telling a racist joke?
No one should tell, hear or tolerate a racist joke. But why stop there?
No one should tell a joke about any ethnic, religious or national group. No jokes about blacks, whites, Hispanics, Poles, Turks, Russians or Asians. No jokes about Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Zoroastrians. No jokes about parents, husbands or wives, in-laws, siblings, and certainly not children. No jokes about men or women or any other permutation that people with vivid imaginations have today fabricated.
There should be no jokes about occupations – whether rabbis, lawyers, doctors, carpenters, bankers, plumbers, teachers, postmen, soldiers, police officers, fire fighters, first responders, second or third responders and not even jokes about those who don’t respond at all.
No license should be given to members of one group to poke fun at their own. Jews, for example, should not tell jokes about litvaks, yekkes, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Galician, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Yemenite, Moroccan, Syrian, Ethiopian, Persian, Iraqi, Egyptian or Libyan Jews.
There should be no jokes about pets. Dogs, cats, hamsters and fish apparently have feelings too. No jokes about inanimate buildings (the builders might take offense) nor jokes about trees, fields or flowers (which, after all, were planted by someone).
Jokes that are intended to be mean-spirited, cruel, humiliating or bullying should never be uttered.
In short, we must ban all forms of humor, lest someone, somewhere, sometime be offended. Perhaps we have arrived at that enlightened stage already? And aren’t we better off for it? Maybe not. Maybe we all need to relax a little, not to be so uptight, laugh once in a while, be kind, sensitive and tolerant, and not succumb to the intolerant word police who are ready to arrest and prosecute anyone even slightly jocular – because tyranny of thought is no joking matter."
R' S.P.
