by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Watercooler is the section of the blog in which we share with you real-life horror stories from the frontlines of race in the workplace. This week, we have a story from Adrienne:

This morning I heard my boss laughing hysterically in her office, repeating over and over again that we “just had to read this hilarious story my sister just sent to me!” A few minutes later she emails the story to me and then rushes into my office eager to share her new found joy with me. The following is the email she sent:

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The Ant and the Grasshopper

OLD VERSION*:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

***

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

News networks CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote.

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As I’m reading this my boss is standing over my shoulder giggling, waiting for me to break into laughter. But the more I read the more uncomfortable I felt. When I finished I told her that I guessed this was a Republican joke so I just didn’t get it. My white, upper middle-class, polo playing, polo pony owning, Louis Vuitton bag carrying boss is a major Republican. There is an on-going “light” jest regarding our differing political affiliations as I am a loyal progressive. A 24 year-old upper-middle class black woman myself (albeit without the Polo or Vuitton) I found this joke very offensive. I felt there were a lot of racial implications, especially once Jesse Jackson and Oprah were drug into the mess. The whole premise wreaked of the conservative philosophy that all poor people are poor just because they’re lazy. The joke completely ignores major issues like racial bias, white privilege, male gatekeepers, and generations of inequity. I just thought the whole thing was really crass, and typically Republican.

Please email [email protected] if you’d like to send in a story, put “watercooler” in the subject line, and let us know what name we should use for you. Pseudonyms and first names are totally fine. You can read more Watercooler stories here.