Little Racist Jokes

by Svetlana Slapsak (The author is a professor and writer from Ljubljana)

Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic have stated their views about women and race. With the light irony of a howitzer Karadzic would adopt 60,000 Serb infants born after rape in Bosnia.

A terrifying picture of a vast concentration camp. Presumably, Karadzic would not have to look after every child individually, except to put them collectively to sleep to the sounds of gusle. But at least it is clear what visions govern this singular

imagination. The lucky foster-father-to-be in the camp could from time to time teach one of his interpretations of sexuality: 1. father determines the ethnic origin of the child; 2. every rape/sexual intercourse ends in the birth of a child; 3. a woman may not abort; 4. after all, a woman, especially if she is a Moslem, does not exist; 5. a child does not need a mother.

Slobodan Milosevic believes that no one may steal his show and, therefore, has to explain to the world public in even more precise terms how he sees the sexuality and a couple of other things which the Westerners address and know nothing about: the race. The joke is more radical than Karadzic's because Milosevic, a new Socrates, with maieutic (in its basic and figurative sense) skill sets out to prove: 1. a Moslem woman (so he has heard) gave birth to a little Negro; 2. there have never been, there are not, and there will never be, blacks among the Serbs; 3. a Moslem woman lies as she was not raped by Serbs and instead played around with blacks; 4. all Moslems lie because they are all women anyway; 5. those who lie, also steal; 6. I do not recognize Bosnia, a Moslem state with illegitimate blacks, women and Moslems where all lie and steal.

Citizens under Karadzic's and Milosevic's rule, unfortunately also those who are female and those of a darker complexion, can prove only by their bodies the accuracy of sexual-racial theories of their leaders. The issue of women and race has brought to the surface in an explicit and perfectly understandable form, the monstrosity of a frame of mind, usually opaque to the observer from the outside world: the campaign of proving the "Serb truth" has been brought to a close, perhaps by dint of some superior justice, by the one who was the most responsible for it.