Julie Scarle: Jokes about disability are fine, within limits

Is it ever okay to tell offensive jokes? Julie Scarle from Radford says it can be, but not if it deepens divisions.

Question: How does a blind skydiver know when to open his parachute? Answer: His dog’s lead goes slack.

I first heard this joke told by our charity’s President, Len Jackson OBE, at a packed My Sight Nottinghamshire Annual General Meeting.

The audience was full of visually impaired people and their guide dogs, and the joke brought the house down, generating howls of laughter from the audience.

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about humour and why some jokes are acceptable to minority groups, such as disabled people, while others I’ve heard are simply extremely hurtful and offensive.

The joke told by Len was funny because it didn’t in any way incite discrimination or hatred of blind people. When you hear the joke, you think the blind protagonist is quite a brave soul to go skydiving when he can’t see; it’s a story that pokes fun but if anything it encourages admiration of the blind man and his courage in the face of his disability.

But when satire and humour is used to incite discrimination or hatred of a minority race, religion or disability, then it crosses a line of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

As someone who writes this opinion column regularly, I more than most fully uphold the right to free speech; which includes the right to poke fun from time to time, but with the right to freedom of speech surely also comes responsibility to use this freedom wisely and sensitively. Just because I have the right to speak freely doesn’t mean I should use that right to incite hatred and deepen divisions in the community in which I live.

Jokes that portray blind people as stupid and deserving of ridicule on the grounds of their disability are, in my view, highly offensive. They foster ignorance and stupidity, causing real hurt. These jokes are just not funny and serve no purpose other to cause hurt, misunderstanding and division.

So, as someone who is blind, do I think it’s okay to make blind jokes? Yes, I think humour can be used to great effect to create better understanding, break down barriers and make difficult subjects like disability, race and religion easier to understand. I do, however, strongly believe that humour and satire need to be deployed sensitively and carefully. Any humour that encourages hatred of minority groups and deepens the divisions in our society leading to a lack of understanding is not only offensive but destructive and dangerous too. It causes distress and pain to individuals and helps to foster intolerance, making it difficult for communities to live in peace together, risking the destruction of those very freedoms we hold dear.

The rights we enjoy walk hand-in-hand with responsibility, sensitivity and kindness – otherwise we are as bullying, barbaric and ruthless as those who are trying to remove our freedoms from us by censure and even terror. Two wrongs never make a right, however we try to justify it.