I feel as if this must be a trick question.

The individual could be any ethnicity and it’s the exact same stupid joke. What’s the catch?

Ah, I get it. Ebonics. "Be more specific" = "be more pacific".

Hey I don't have perfectly formed tongue, vocal, and throat muscles either. When I get excited I can have a bit of a lisp or otherwise unintentional mispronunciation. Of course I attribute that to being of an advanced human race that predated modern humans for millennia and as such perfected telepathy and so said muscles became nascent out of simple lack of need.

To each their own I suppose. :chin:

Basically a guy literally becoming more pacific-like when someone asks them to be more "pacific" as opposed to more "specific" which was likely what they meant. Is this racist? — TiredThinker

Or maybe he is just an angry guy and they were making fun of that.

Being as the joke itself has nothing to do with the color of the person it is aimed at, there can be no valid screams of racism. The truth is probably that someone in the congregation took the picture and did the art work, one of his brothers.

No.
Nor is it in any other way significant. It's a visual pun of no great impact.

No catch. I have seen the same meme with a white guy in it. But the emphasis I would put on it is this black guy is the listener, not the speaker, and he is the one becoming more pacific. Also he's at a podium so I assumed he was a teacher. Possibly an English professor.

It's anyone giving a speech, who has just been asked to "be more pacific", rolling his eyes at the question, internally wondering, "how in hell can I get any more pacific than this?"

Ah, I get it. Ebonics. — Outlander

Oh. I hadn't even considered this. Maybe its a Rorsach :wink:

Also he's at a podium so I assumed he was a teacher. Possibly an English professor. — TiredThinker

I assumed he was the preacher at a southern baptist church, and from what I remember some of them do need to be more pacific.

I assumed he was the preacher at a southern baptist church, and from what I remember some of them do need to be more pacific. — Sir2u

It doesn't show. He seems already half asleep in the first frame. Any more pacific than that is comatose>dead>absent>forgotten. The cartoon would be funnier if it dissolved into a typical South Pacific cyclone.

It's frustrating me, out of all the topics that are a bit over my head or which otherwise fizzle my brain out, this literal nothing of a meme has evolved into some sort of unsolved Delian Problem here for some reason.

In certain regions or neighborhoods there is what is known, informally, as "street talk" or - and there is where it takes on a racial dimension - "Ebonics" (or "ghetto speak" to some), often by African Americans or other minorities. Eg. "Can I 'axe' you a question" as opposed to"Can I ask you a question", the person is saying the latter however due to unconscious habit or perhaps ease of pronunciation the former is what actually leaves the speaker's mouth.

So I can imagine a person who speaks in such a manner getting excited at something and exclaiming or repeating "Be more specific man, be more specific" and in some sort of wry humorous way the idea of a person saying something that sounds nonsensical "Be more 'pecific, yo. You need to be more 'pecific!" over and over creates a sense of comedic absurdity - as if one could somehow become "more pacific", whatever that would mean.

It's basically making fun of anyone who doesn't pronounce the word "specific" properly, with the leading 'S' sound being omitted or nearly omitted. Which in and of itself isn't racial, though it can be lowbrow due to fact some people may mispronounce a word due to the presence of an actual speech impediment and not just the word being a linguistic anomaly the pronunciator simply doesn't say often and as such pronounces imperfectly.

I can see how it could be rationalized as offensive or cast in similar light for any of the following reasons:

- Certain ethnic groups, be it primarily linguistically and as a result physically or genetically altogether, pronounce things differently. Eg. Many Asians have a tendency to pronounce the 'L' sound as an 'R' sound. That's a stereotype but however can in fact be observed. It's standard animal kingdom ostracization ("he talks funny, he's weird/not 'one of us'", etc.)

- "Dialectism" or to be proper linguistic discrimination is a noted phenomenon, strongly, if not more so in the past, tied to classism. Meaning, if you're poor, your education was poor, so naturally your proficiency in a certain language would likely be measurably lower than someone who was rich. So following along, minorities have been noted to receive poorer education than non-minorities due to income inequality, a state of affairs many assign blame to racism.

Well that's basically it. I thought it was a funny meme worth a 2 second chuckle because I "got it", likely crafted by someone who "got it" as well and finds the whole thing an innocent pun created to encourage a smile, lighten the mood, and pass the time. That said, ostracization is a powerful first step toward isolation, which is a strong forward march toward dehumanization, from which genocide or ethnocide is but a stone's throw away. Further said, after having to explain all this, if I see it in the future, I will likely not chuckle but click away out of sheer mental exhaustion.

I study hate. That is to say, as a staunch legal enthusiast it definitely becomes a relevant field to be acquainted with on many an occasion.

hat is to say, as a staunch legal enthusiast it definitely becomes a relevant field to be acquainted with on many an occasion. — Outlander

Would you run a prosecution that someone making this joke intended some slur?

To my mind, it's a really, really big reach from this to a slur of Ebonic dialect (or similar). Wondering if you 're thinking this could be rationalised to others, rather than 'for the right kind of person'?

Just substitute a middle-aged white woman in a suit... It would still be a nothing joke, but nobody would make a fuss over it.

:ok:

I can more easily imagine an African American being the main sayer of "ax" versus "ask", but "pacific" in place of "specific" seems broader to me. Like a person first learning the language as a child no matter ethnicity.

Someone is telling the black guy to be more pacific, but black men are violent, so, instead of being pacific, he disappears. That is how it is racist. Of course, the person who claimed it to be racist happens to be from a corner of the world where geography is not taught, so the body of water called Pacific Ocean does not come to mind when the sea shows up.
Nothing to do with ebonics.

To me he looks like someone bored with his audience and wishing to be elsewhere. He could be a Biden spokesperson. Poor guy.

Guys, 100% a joke about mocking ebonics as a sign of lack of education and intelligence.

Not a question. Hang that in my break-room at work, and you have no job tomorrow.

If you read it differently, you're from far far away.