When is it OK to be offensive?

So I’m finally getting around to weighing in on the Kuli Roberts thing. I’ll go ahead and say right upfront: I don’t have the answers, don’t even have an answer. Just a lot of questions, mainly.

Also, plenty of others have already offered opinions, so my adding my two cents’ worth won’t add much to our sum total of wisdom around whether Roberts should have written that column in the first place, and whether she should have been fired. (Neither, in my view; she should have retired gracefully years ago. I quoted her in a couple of my books but after every column started sounding the same, I stopped. There are only so many ways to bullet point one’s hatred of men.)

The serendipitously named Jacques Rousseau argues that silencing offensive viewpoints denies us the opportunity to grow as a society, and South Africa’s most intellectual comedian, Conrad Koch, considers the matter in the light of more recent academic approaches to the question of race here; his comments on comedians and the mimicry of accents are especially interesting.

From the comments I picked up on Twitter, that ever-present dipstick into the zeitgeist — at least the zeitgeist of LSM 8-10 ages 25-49 — it appears that there is something approaching consensus. The column was racist, and badly written, and these two factors combined render the issue moot.

Here’s my problem. I need to establish what the ground rules are, because I frequently write and say things I do not mean — either for humorous effect or to make a point, or both. I routinely make statements that at face value are appallingly sexist. I collect insults, mostly those of other people, though I do throw in some of my own from time to time. I also enjoy mimicking accents. Russian and Scottish are my favourites, but there are lots of other voices I like to slip into mid-sentence; the other week I conducted a conversation with a friend in which we both spoke in Cape coloured accents for 45 minutes. (He happens to be (mostly) Indian, technically speaking. Not sure if that makes a difference.)

Now, what if Kuli really didn’t mean what she wrote? What if she really was trying to make outrageous assertions in an attempt to illuminate the absurdity of racial stereotypes, as some have suggested? Why, when Krijay Govender told jokes about coloureds while she MCed the awards function I attended the other night, the audience laughed, but when Kuli makes much the same assertions, it gets her fired? They’re both trying to be funny, after all.

Now, I’d guess that most of us know intuitively why we make these distinctions. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain why the comedian is funny and the columnist is not. Nevertheless, comedians do routinely utter statements that at face value are far more racist than any of the views expressed in the column in question. Why do we hold some people to account for their words, and give others the benefit of the doubt? What does it mean when a white guy can call himself Michael Naicker, mock virtually every aspect of South African Indian identity and have sari-wearing grannies laughing so hard the tears roll down their cheeks? Why is Ben Trovato given the space to make all sorts of outrageous assertions about pretty much everybody?

So there’s the question whether a text should be separated from the intention of its author. After all, if the author says it wasn’t meant to be racist, does that render it acceptable? Who gets the final say? On the surface, the same text could be read as satire or polemic, for example, and if we do not understand the intention behind it, we could interpret it either way. Those of us who use humour in our daily lives know only too well the risk of being misunderstood. I know that my intention is not racist (or sexist); if anything, I’m painfully aware of the constructed nature of identity and a prevailing culture — I’m talking Joburg’s northern suburbs here — of unexamined privilege. If I play with stereotypes, it’s because I’m aware of how arbitrary they are.

But what if somebody takes me seriously? (It has happened.) What if somebody holds me to my words? I certainly don’t want to have to mean everything I say: good grief, I’d never say anything again.

Now, I’m not necessarily defending anyone here. But I’m interested in why we’re selective in our willingness to laugh things off. Why is it that some get to enjoy diplomatic immunity from the indignation of the peanut gallery but others do not? Where is that line and how do we know when we’re stepping too close to it?

I’d really like to know, for my own peace of mind.