teaching rant

My students were especially energetic today, which may or may not be related to the fact that I brought in brownies to share. I had planned a short groupwork assignment, which meant they were also all talking and walking around the classroom to record their answers on the whiteboard.

At one point, the phone rang in the classroom--a phone I hadn't previously realized was there. One of my students who was taking notes next to it ("D"), asked, "Can I answer it?"

Me (confused): Okay.
D (answering phone): This is English 28 speaking.
Class: SHH!

LONG pause.

D: Well, let me see if I can get you more information about that. (Holds phone in hand.) She says her podium isn't working . . . ?
Me (finally takes phone): Hello? I think you may have reached the wrong number.
Woman on phone: This isn't the help desk?
Me: No, this is a classroom.
Woman on phone: Oh! I'm sorry. (hangs up)
Me (to class): She got the wrong number.

Class collectively gets back to work. Some are still laughing.

Later, the class shared their group work answers, only to reveal that about half of them had been fundamentally confused about the fairly simple activity. They asked me to clarify it, and as I did some of them felt bad about being "wrong," while others just thought the assignment made no sense. I tried to pull it all together and discuss what we could get out of the answers (even if they were a little -- or a lot -- tangential to the original assignment), but I don't think they completely bought it.

THEN.

In the final ten minutes or so of class, a student group performed a scene from the play we've just finished discussing (She Stoops to Conquer). This group decided to "update" the play -- which is fine and can be really interesting -- but did it in a fairly haphazard way, assigning accents and mannerisms to various characters. Mrs. Hardcastle was a "country" woman, which kind of makes sense; Hastings was British and clearly urban ("because he sounds British," a student explained later); Marlow sounded inexplicably like he dropped out of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?. What really disturbed me, though--and the reason why I felt the need to rant today--is that one student, "J" (who is Chinese American) performed Tony Lumpkin, the play's primary clown, with an exaggerated, terrible Chinese accident reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The students laughed, probably because it was so ridiculous, but I was just sort of shocked. When the scene finished, we had our usual Q&A session, and one of the students asked them to explain their accents. J basically said that he chose his accent because "look at me, it fits."

!?!?!?!??!??!??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't pull it together to say something right then in class as I should have, about the problems of laughing at racial stereotypes for the sake of racial stereotypes, about the danger of ever claiming that a stereotype "fits" a real person simply because of that person's ethnicity and skin color, about the way in which racial humor can theoretically be used to say something provocative--if really disconcerting--about a character like Tony, but that it needs to be justified by the text, and not by the person playing him.

Instead, I was silent and allowed them to move on to the next question before dismissing the class when time ran out. My students generally really seemed to like the performance (Tony's part was, after all, a very small part of it--he had fewer lines than anyone), but I can't get J's performance and explanation out of my head.

So my question is: what do I do?