Chapter 21 Summary and Analysis

Many feel that humor is a scheme of self-defense that only maligned and oppressed minorities should be allowed to use. They must take offense at privileged Vonnegut. In New York City, everyone silently sizes up everyone else on minute distinctions of race. Doubtless they size him up as a German. When asked about German reunification, he replies that most of what people like about German culture comes from a time there were many Germanys; that which they hate comes from one. Germans are frightening because they like to fight other white people; the U.S. in Grenada, Panama and Nicaragua, are fighting "Neeger wars." During World War I, Anglos hate all things German and force the shut down of German-American institutions, so when World War II arrives, they are the least tribal and most acculturated segment of the white population. One...