By 
Bigotry in all its forms is repugnant – no qualifications, no exceptions, no what-abouts.
The delusion of superiority based on identity is poisonous: Socially, personally, and interpersonally. It makes the world worse for everyone, whether they know it or not.
But that is not to say it cannot be funny.
In fact, because of all the psychological contortions a person must perform to justify hating millions – maybe billions – of people they’ve never met, there can be, perversely, a lot to laugh at when someone candidly spews bile about women, protestants, older people, migrants, or whatever demographic holds a special place of disdain in their confused, hateful little heart.
This is not to say every racial slur is comedy gold or that people who hold such beliefs are merely misguided buffoons to be pitied rather than scorned.
But sometimes, when circumstances conspire to leave you no choice but to spend an extended period of time with someone who professes not to like, say, Asian people – like the fella I recently shared a few one-on-one hours with in the intimate (not in that way) confines of a car – laughter seems not only the most natural response, but perhaps the most productive one too.
It was the tail-end of summer and as I looked out the window toward the bottom of the driveway, I saw him sprinting laps around his parked car, arms flailing, giraffe-like legs going everywhere, his face the picture of pure panic.
The obscenities he screamed would probably have been intelligible to anyone outdoors within about two miles – but to me, behind the double glazing, his terrified screams sounded like some garbled alien language coming through a broken walkie-talkie.
Absorbed by the oddness of it all, I stood and watched, rapt, until this silent movie scene reached a suitably slapstick climax when he ran chest-first into his open driver-side door.
Doubled over, he climbed back into the car.
When I got in, without letting on, I let him tell me his bee-chase story – which, to his credit, even in his winded, hysterical state, he recounted with unfaltering fidelity.
About half an hour later, things threatened to turn ugly.
“I’m luckin’ for a house lad but I can’t get one, lad,” he said.
“Aye, not easy got these days.”
“All them foreigners coming in, lad. They’re taking all the houses and all the jobs.”
That old chestnut, I thought.
“I dunno. Most houses here have local people living in them. Anyway, what are foreigners supposed to do? Live on the street?”
“Naw lad, I don’t mean all foreigners. Just Asians and those sort of ones. I love Polish people like. I absolutely loooove Polish people,” he repeated, with that weird, affectionately aggressive I-could-eat-you energy.
I couldn’t help laughing. Whether he truly loved the Poles or was faking it, it was funny.
“Why do you love Polish people but hate Asians again?”
“Cus Polish people are the hardest workers in the world. Far harder workers than us.”
“And Asians?”
“Useless, lad. I worked with them before and they do nothing. They just stand about chatting to each other.”
“All of them? Ye know almost everybody in the world is from Asia?”
“All of them. They get all the jobs. I went off sick, came back, and four Asians were doing my job. And they kept them and sacked me.”
“Frig sake. That’s mad.”
“Mad is right lad – the way the bosses treat them compared to us.”
“Naw, I mean mad how you let four lazy, useless people take your job? Lucky a couple of those famously industrious Polish lads didn’t land. The bosses would have had to let the whole factory go.”
He was stumped. Again, I couldn’t help but laugh at how nonsensical and illogical his racism was.
And, oddly, as if noticing the absurdity of his own bigotry for the first time, he started laughing as well.
Now, I am not saying I cured this man during our journey. He did not recant and expressly disavow his racist views.
But Nietzsche famously wrote that ‘Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter’.
Hopefully the laugh we shared softened the sting (bee joke) out of his prejudice.
But I haven’t seen or heard from him since, so he could be anywhere.
Poland perhaps.
