Reviews | When a racist joke doesn’t deserve to be canceled

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However, the issue here is the degree. Based on the kind of responses we’ve seen so many, particularly since the spring of 2020, it’s conceivable that Purdue will bow to pressure from an aggrieved public opposition and we’ll read about Keon’s firing some time after Christmas.

It would be wrong. If Purdue holds out pretty well, it will be a gesture in support not of racism but of reason, a kind of holiday gift to our public discourse.

I don’t deny that Keon’s joke was racist. I would have cracked if I had been present. However, how much racism is involved here? Isn’t it true that there is still a difference between racism that, however heinous, is nevertheless negligent or accidental, as opposed to racism intended to send a racist message? (We’ve seen too much of it in recent years.) Is it true that we should treat racism like a kind of cyanide, where even a trace in a glass of water is deadly?

The idea that a tacky joke is the measure of an entire human being has started to seem almost ordinary lately. Still, it’s a pretty extraordinary and even quite medieval idea. Too often it is used in an extremist, thoughtless and recreationally hostile way.

Some may think that when the joke is racist, all bets are off and indeed we have seen the essence of a person, their wholeness ecce homo, so to speak. But it does imply that combating the power of whiteness must focus all of our efforts, including determining the nature of morality in general. This is the unspoken commitment of much of high awakening today. And he too is less the Platonic good than a modern particularity.

If Keon has a record of minor racial offenses, it’s more reasonable to treat this recent episode as a straw that broke the camel’s back. If he has been incompetent as chancellor in one way or another, perhaps that incident should be treated as a straw as well. But if he did his job well and I don’t pretend to know if that’s the case and it turns out he didn’t get the memo about what’s funny and allowed now versus when he was young, then he should keep his job. Few people would have considered this a radical proposition until recently.

Maybe Purdue will support Keon and let life go on. His gaffe will forever be recorded online. We hope he fully understands why the joke was both lame and hurtful, if he hasn’t already. But if his career continues and he is treated by his colleagues as a flawed but legitimate human being doing his job, then we are witnessing proof that this era of excess is passing.

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