Merchant of Venice, A comedy?

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The one thing I keep going back to with this play is that it is somehow supposed to be a comedy. Talking about white priviledge in class made me think even more about this subject. First of all, why is racism funny to some people, in plays, and in modern day reality? Why do we have racist jokes and people constantly making fun of people who are different. And one thing i've been thinking about too since our discussion in class, is how some people think it's okay to just throw around the N word along with tons of other racist and hurtful words. One place I see it a lot is in live video game play, the things I hear people calling other people, who they don't even know, it could be an 8 year old girl and grown men will be calling them the N word or the R word or all kinds of terribly offensive stuff. All because what? they didn't help them get the kill. I had never played Fortnite before and I tried to give it a shot a while back and within 5 minutes of the first game I had been called a N word and the R word among other things I don't even feel comfortable writing, but this was all because I didn't stay with the team! Completely unnaceptable! And I got to thinking about how people talk in these games very differently than in real life and also what compels them to use racist words, why not just be like, "Hey you suck at this game bro" It really just goes to show you that people do not take racism seriously, and they don't see that white priviledge is very much alive and well. People are all about like, "oh you have equal rights, it's just a word, freedom of speech" like, no, that doesn't make racism okay! anyway, back to the play, and how people think it's funny to use these words, in fact in video games I always hear people laughing directly after calling someone a racially offensive word...? Not okay, ugh but the point is that they think it's harmless.  Even the most seemingly light hearted joke can still be incredibly demeaning and racist, but Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is dealing with pretty large concepts including killing people and tricking people and a lot of times, judging people because of thier race. So how is it at all funny. Even when the girls dress up as men, i guess it's suppose to be funny, but it's not. They basically force thier husbands into showing disloyalty and then get mad at them for being disloyal. Why is manipulation and trickery considered comedy? I don't know, to me there were such large issues looming in the background of this play that even the supposed light hearted funny parts did not seem funny to me at all.

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