30 Rock S3E8 (2009)
Bonus: A similar joke from the Office (US) S1E2 (2005)
SKINNY ARM HAVERS!
Not to try too hard to explain the joke but I think the core concept being highlighted here is one of a perceived discrepancy between “diversity inclusive descriptors” and terms that imply “otherness.” For example, a white person might feel uncomfortable using the term “black” but would be comfortable with terms like “person of color” and “African-American.” Linguistically, this might be because “person of color” implies that the individual is first and foremost a person and that their color, in an ethnic sense, is an additive quality to their “personness.” I’m a person. You’re a person. We’re all…persons. That sort of thing. Similarly, a person who is African-American is, much like the (I’m going to assume American) white speaker, also American. It’s the idea of an immediately identifiable, if unspoken, shared quality.
I interpreted it more as (like the title implies) Jack’s inherent racism. Due to the type of company he usually surrounds himself with, the only time he ever hears the term “Puerto Rican” is in a negative context, in which someone is using the term as a way to insult someone or complain or something. Jack does not have a diverse enough friend circle to actually have ever heard someone use the term “Puerto Rican” to refer to someone’s ethnicity without making some sort of judgement on the person.
Isn’t that just racism? I thought internalized racism when minorities unconsciously assimilate to the racism they are subjected to.
This happens with the word “disabled” too, so much so that there was a whole #SayTheWord thing about trying to educate people a couple of years back about it not being a negative word or a pejorative, just a factual one, and why euphemisms (“special”, “differently abled”, “handicapped”, “handicapable”, and so on and so forth) are infantilising, othering, and otherwise harmful to the community, but it went about as well as you’d expect…
I think we can all agree Liz (and Jack) are pretty racist.
There’s a similar bit from Schitt’s Creek I really like about the word “Jewish”. I’d post it here but I can’t find a good quality version
This definitely doesn’t do well at capturing how flustered he was in the scene, but here you go.
Schitt’s Creek S2E5 (2016)
That’s a great scene. I need to finish watching that show.
