Personalized jokes: when it comes to offending people, nothing fits the bill like ethnic jokes

National Review, Sept 29, 1997 by E.V. Kontorovich

Personalized Jokes When it comes to offending people, nothing fits the bill like ethnic jokes. E. V. KONTOROVICH HERE's a great joke for you. An Irishman, a Jew, and a black are in a boat together. The boat starts taking on water -- no, sorry, I can't tell this one. Getting away with this joke would take an entire committee.

An Irishman would say the Irish part before passing the baton to a Jew, and so on. For our culture prohibits making fun, whether in malice or in jest, of any ethnic or racial group except your own. Jackie Mason lampoons Jews. Chris Rock mocks blacks. Margaret Cho pokes fun at Asians. King of the Hill spoofs Middle American whites. They all carry on with impunity, for society recognizes the innate right of every American to make jokes about his own ethnic and racial group. People like Mason and Rock can exercise their right to maximum advantage, and we are all amused. BUT the current system short-changes millions of Americans of all creeds and colors who would value the right to joke about other groups more than they value the right to joke about their own. They are stuck in a rigid structure, because of imperfect property rights in ethnic jokes. They are protected against others who want to joke about their group, but they can't in any way transfer their right in exchange for remuneration. This only perpetuates divisions by maintaining ethnic groups in their self-mockery monopoly. This will never bring Americans closer together. But the free market will. Some people just don't find themselves very funny -- but crave the opportunity to laugh at others without being branded a racist. There are doubtless enough people like this to create both supply and demand in joking rights for all groups. Whatever the initial distribution of a scarce resource, everyone will be better off if we are given property rights in the resource and allowed to freely trade with others. After all mutually advantageous trades are made, the situation becomes, in economics parlance, Pareto optimal superior. Those who are happy with the right of self-mockery they start with don't sell it and remain just as well off as before, but others can sell their right or buy someone else's. Hence, everyone is at least as well, if not better, off than he was at the start. This is the celebrated Coase Theorem, which revolutionized legal and economic thinking 35 years ago. To most people, it is known as common sense: I have something you want, you have something I want: let's make a deal. Here's how it would work. Each group's property right in self-deprecating humor would be broken up into vouchers of equal value. Every group member gets a voucher. After that, each person can hold on to his voucher or sell it for cash, as he sees fit. A voucher makes the bearer an honorary member of a particular group for purposes of joking. (In order to preserve the best feature of the current system when the new property rights are codified, Eddie Murphy will be granted an across-the-board free pass.) So, for example, if a white owns a black voucher, he can say whatever he wants about blacks. By producing the voucher, he will be protected from discrimination suits, and will have standing to sue for slander anyone who calls him a racist. But minorities will not be abused under this system. Since there will necessarily be fewer minority vouchers, each member will have relatively more control over the vouchers' price than a white would over the price of the white vouchers. Indeed, a small group like Native Americans could organize to hold back voucher sales, driving prices through the ceiling. It's impossible to predict the swaps people would make under the system. It all depends on preferences. Perhaps blacks will sell all their joke coupons to the Klan. Not such a bad outcome. The latter will spend so much money on joking rights that they won't even be able to afford white sheets, and the former will be elevated to the middle class in one giant leap. Lots of people will just hold onto the vouchers they're given. Some speculation will occur; maybe a futures market will develop. For example, WASPs seem to get less and less funny as time goes by. My advice to WASPs: Sell short. Some may fear that a market in racial jokes will only exacerbate tensions. This is unlikely. One's ability to make jokes at others' expense will be strictly controlled by how much members of the other group mind it: if a group finds the jokes at its expense more than it can bear in good humor, it can buy its vouchers back, or not sell any more. But such jokes may actually make things better. ACADEMICS have come up with an interesting justification for racial self-abuse. When blacks call each other ''niggaz,'' learned men tell us they are usurping the rhetoric of their oppressors. By making it their own, they reduce its power to hurt. But the market is a great equalizer. If the right to jest becomes simply a commodity, with the target group holding whatever share it wants, it may well disassemble the concepts of oppressed and oppressor. This scheme will strike many as quixotic. But President Clinton will surely say many things during his year-long appeal for candor on racial issues, and none of them will be remotely funny. What the debate about race in America really needs is levity. For laughter is the hemoglobin of national healing. Of course, I may be accused of being self-interested. Jews are bound to do well under this plan. Jewish jokes, as the success of Woody Allen demonstrates, are perhaps the most widely appreciated. Demand will be high, and there are few suppliers. No doubt Jews will hold out for a high price. (I'm exercising my prerogative of self-mockery. But it grows stale. Want to buy it off me?)