It's Okay It Is Just a Joke

A picture from the show of Christine and Richie.

    The other morning I was watching the show The New Adventures of Old Christine and there was a pretty racist comment that caught me off guard. The show is focused around a single mom who is a little crazy and in this scene she is dropping off her son Ritchie at his first day of private school.

Christine: Look at how nice this place is! Look at the nice artwork. Oh and there is nice markers and a nice teacher.

Richie: Mommy where are all the black kids?

     Before taking my American Studies class I would not have thought twice about this joke. Now I see that this is very racist and I am wondering why these types of jokes are allowed on television?
     Christine uses the word nice so many times in the opening line and, as we have talked about in class, this gives the connotation that the people who go to the private school are nice and those who don't are not. Then when Richie comes in the one liner about "black kids" it connotes that blacks are not nice. Also, since it is a private school that costs a lot of money it is also connoting that blacks can not afford to go their and all of them are poor. Stereotyping people is the most common form or racism.
     This all comes back to our favorite question is American Studies. Is America a cycle or are we always progressing? We are supposed to be a country of equals and racism supposedly died with The Civil War yet we are still making racist comments to over thousands of people. Again and again our country falls back into the same issues of our past that caused so much trouble back then,