once you go black... / you're a single mother
A Racist Dog post.
Christmas lunch. Your uncle puts down his fork and says, "I'm not being funny, but." Everyone at the table suddenly needs to check on the gravy. The gravy has never been so thoroughly checked. The taxi driver from the station says you can't say anything these days, and then says quite a lot. You say "mm" for six miles and get out a street early, in the rain, by choice. Your nan forwards an email she "found funny". It's a chain letter with a joke nobody should ever have written down. You reply "Hope you're well!" and close the laptop. A colleague starts a joke with "it's not racist if it's true". The office goes silent. Somewhere, mercifully, a printer jams. He doesn't finish. Nobody asks him to. **Why it caught on:** a yellow Labrador in reading glasses, from a photo of unknown origin, became the early-2010s template for the old two-line racist joke, usually with its own excuse built in. Everyone has sat next to that uncle at dinner, and the dog, who was only wearing glasses, is innocent.