After watching "Diversity Day" from the NBC television show The Office do you think humor and satire can teach people about racism and ethnic differences? Also, the character Michael Scott is clearly intolerant towards all people. Can we learn a lesson from people like him?
24 November 2010
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I think that humor and satire are a very good way to teach people about race and ethnicity because it may take away from some of the awkwardness and tension the person might feel, say if they were forced to voice their opinion in a group. By showing how baseless and ignorant some ideas may be through humor and satire those that have those ideas may feel more comfortable in discussing and even changing their ideas. The most important lesson I think we can learn from someone like Michael Scott is that when it comes to race and ethnicity, being intolerant will not get you very far. Micheal got in trouble with his boss and offended quite a few of his employees because of his ignorance, and that is just not acceptable.
Jenna Fravel
Michael Scott is a man of many talents. Being inappropriate at all times is his calling card. With his “That’s what she said!” comments in any situation, and his completely irrational way of running an office he can be seen as, at times, racist. But I believe he is not racist. Racism comes from hate and ignorance. Michael has an abundance of ignorance but hate is lost to him. His racist comments come from his need to make everyone laugh. Michael wants to make friends, and wants Scranton to be known as the “fun branch”. He does not discriminate based on race, he does not deny people equal treatment, he follows unfair stereotypes because he thinks it seems funny. In the office episode “Diversity Day” Michael may have made many comments and tried to make humor using “race jokes” but there was a very memorable situation where he stands up to racism. In response to Toby’s joke “Hey, we're not all going to sit in a circle Indian style, are we?” Michale rebuffs this by saying “No. This is not a joke. What you said was offensive... and lame, so double offense. This is a place of welcoming, and... you should just get the hell out of here”. Michael scott is ignorant but not racist. He just tries to be funny.
There is without question that satire and humor is a very effective tool to teach any social subject matter including racism and ethnic differences. As seen in The Office, Michael is clearly portrayed as a closed minded idiot and his attempt to make the Dunder Mifflin office “colorblind”. Through his trials and failures we can see that trying to not recognize race in a workplace is not the correct means of having a “Diversity Day”. In fact, he felt that the Middle Eastern races would be “too explosive” for his exercise. The lesson learned in this episode is to view race through more clear minded individuals such as Mr. Brown that race should be viewed through the acronym HERO, Honesty, Empathy, Respect, and Open-mindedness (clearly opposite of Michael’s views).
I do believe that humor and satire can teach people about racism and ethnic differences. I believe this because people have an easier time learning when they feel comfortable talking about a subject. By being able to laugh about a tough topic you can learn through humor how different comments affect different people. People can learn from characters like Michael Scott through his rude comments we can see how ignorance can hurt other people’s feelings and make them feel uncomfortable and unaccepted in society. People can also learn how racial comments don’t get you anywhere in life. Michael’s comments create only discomfort for his coworkers and eventually led to diversity day occurring in the office.
I think humor and satire work well together because poeple dont like to be serious all the time because it makes things awkward. If you add humor it decreases the tension between yourself and other people. Also if you add humor and comedy to that topic people might have a better chance to relate to it and have a better chance to make a better discussion. We can learn from Michael Scott because the world needs more poeple that are intolerent and not prejudiced and less people that are disrespectful and oblivious to eachother's races.
i believe that humor and satire can most deffently teach people abou racism and ehnic differences. What people want to watch on television is something that will catch their eye and be funny. People are more likley to pay attention and listen to a program like The Office and take something from it. You can see how much of an idiot Michael looks from his racism comments. i think people can learn a lesson from Michaels actions and learn to not pre-judge people, but to be more open minded
I believe that the humor and satire helped people learn more about race and ethnicity because it shows you how other people react to what your doing and saying. Even though it made us laugh it also was brought to our attention that we need to respect eachothers races and ethnicity before making negative comments towards them. With Michaeal Scott, he showed the trouble that can happen by acting the way he acted towards his employees.
I do believe that the humor and satire is a good way to show racism and prejudices as Depicted in the episode of the Office we viewed. The extreme stretching of some stereotypes helps to show some of the foolish ideas that have been generally formed about some races and ethnicity's although they may be true to a certain extent. Michael Scott does a great job of being an intolerant person who refuses to believe that he is doing some what you could call racist and disrespectful acts. For one coming from another country, i believe that they would quickly catch on to some of the stereotypes we have here by watching this episode of the office so i think that they gave good sociological examples of what some American stereotypes are and that they should be frowned upon.
Michael Scotts character protrayed the ideal racist and he did this for a reason. He beleived that humor and sattire can teach people about ethnicity and race. For example, at one point he made each person communiacate and guess each other's race or ethnicity. This explained the radical ideas of how people portray each group and stereotype about others. Also, with humor and sattire, he could catch the poepls attention to beleive that stereotyping and making racist remarks is wrong.
i think satire and satire are a very good way to teach people about race and ethnicity because it makes it easier to talk and makes it a little less tense for the people who are talking about it especially if there are people of different races talking to eachother about it. when it comes to micheal scott though he is a little over the top about the things he does we can learn a lesson from him that being ignorant about others races just makes you look stupid and makes everyone feel awkward.
I think that using humor and satire is helpful when teaching about racism because it makes things alot more interesting. For example when Mr. Brown was talking it was very boring and people were falling asleep. When Michael was talking everyone was listening and making things more fun and interesting for them, which i think helped them learn it better because it was more interesting compared to sitting listening to a boring speech while you're half awake.
Yes I think it did ; it shows a funny way to learn about racism & ethnicity. It alsanges the way alot of the time its akward to discuss it so to make it humorus it takes away from the akwardness & makes someting better and more comfortable ((:
After watching the Diversity Day episode from The Office, I definitely think that humor and satire can teach people about racism and ethnic differences. Although it makes the topic funnier, it's still wrong that it's used and that we need humor about other people's races and ethnicities in order to make people feel more comfortable talking about it. It might be funny to the people whose race/ethnicity isn't getting made fun of; but if it's about yours, you can feel personally offended by the humorous, yet racist comments. You need to think about who you could be offended before you say something ignorant.
Michael Scott is very intolerant of towards other races and ethnicities, it seems. I believe that if he wasn't trying to be funny and get people to laugh,he'd take more time to consider people's feelings. The best example from the episode that I can think of was when Michael offended an Indian coworker of his and she slapped him for continuously making jokes about her race. Even after she did that he still thought it was funny!
I know someone like Michael Scott - in my opinion, they're ignorant in their views on other people's races and ethnicities, nor do they seem to care much about if their openly expressed views make others feel uncomfortable, let alone offended. I think people can learn an important lesson from people like Michael Scott: you can learn that you have to watch what you say, even if you're not intentionally trying to hurt someone's feelings. You can't tell by looking at someone if they're going to be offended by your comments.
Yes, I think humor and satire can teach people about racism. In the episode of The Office, Michael Scott uses humor in way that people can understand more about race and other people’s cultures. I think it is effective to use humor and satire because even though it is funny, after some time, it makes a person think about himself and his actions. He made some of his employees angry but he did not mean to offend them. He wanted his employees to view racism in a funny way instead of being very serious about it.
I agree with Knox and think that the humor and satire are definatly a good way to ease tension and ackwardness some may feel toward this particular topic. "Diversity Day" is a great way to show people exactly what racism is. It also provides many examples of stereotypes that may be used today, and shouldn't be. Finally, i think that Michael Scott is an excellent example of how not to act toward people with ethnic differences and we can most definatly learn a lesson from people like him.
Like many of my classmates, I believe that humor and satire are a great way to teach people about racism and ethnic differences. If you can laugh about how ignorant Michael Scott while he unknowingly insults people, then you must realize that he is doing something wrong. We laugh because we know how idiotic he looks, so why would we want to go and do the same? Humor and satire can deter people from commiting racism because they realize that they would be at the brunt of the joke. I think we can definitely learn a lesson from people like Michael Scott because we see that they are being close minded and we don't want to be like them. Michael Scott is not exactly someone anyone would want to look up to.
Although the lesson of this episode of the office is very beneficial, I believe that adding humor and over exaggerated examples of racial profiling makes it more like a joke rather than a serious matter. Since this is such a serious problem throughout the world, it shouldn’t be made funny by any means. Besides that, I feel that Michael Scott got his point across, by being ignorant, racist, and entirely inappropriate. But I wouldn't recommend this to people who haven't exposed or taught about racial profiling.
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