ethnic jokes

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 6/24/02 8:05:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
einstein at FROGNET.NET writes:

> The Italian jokes of my downstate NY youth were Polish jokes upstate; when I
>  came to Ohio they became WV jokes and on my Fulbright to Germany they
>  transmuted into Fries jokes.  Friesland (Frisia) is the narrow coastal
strip
>  of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark that borders the North Sea. In
>  Toulouse on a subsequent exchange I was told the French looked down on the
>  Belgians but I heard no jokes at their expense.

In a message dated 6/24/02 10:25:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
george.thompson at NYU.EDU writes:

> Also, with reference to the butts of ethnic jokes: a few years ago I
>  bought a book called "Newfie Jokes", based on the stupidity of people
>  from Newfoundland.  Presumably this stereotype is widespread in the
>  rest of Canada?

Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until 1949.  Newfoundland speech
was first recognized as a unique dialect of English in the 18th Century.
Newfoundland time is GMT + 3 1/2 hours, that is, Newfoundland time is one
HALF hour ahead of  the Atlantic Standard Time used in the rest of the
Maritime Provinces.  Its politics are matched only by those of British
Columbia.

Sad to say, it would be surprising to find that Newfoundlanders had not
acquired an uncomplimentary stereotype and an accompanying set of disparaging
ethnic jokes.

A good analogy would probably be the Ohioans cited above who told West
Virginia jokes ("Have you heard of the twenty West Virginians who suffocated
to death?  They saw a Pontiac GTO, thought it meant 'Going To Ohio', and all
climbed in.")

Now to analyze the examples that have accumulated on (infected?) this thread.

First, ethnic jokes are not a category unto themselves, but are rather a
subcategory of group stereotype jokes.  Consider "blonde jokes".  A coworker
from (I think) Nebraska liked to tell "Aggie" jokes about the state's Ag
school.  (Aside to Mark Mandel: you will recall that Komarrans tell Impsec
jokes).

Group stereotype jokes are not ALWAYS disparaging.  Jews tell fundraiser
jokes, in which the stereotype (well-earned!) is the chutzpah of a
fund-raiser.  E.g. the hard sell given a reluctant donor asked to contribute
towards an exhibit on the Jewish poet Ibn-Gavirol: "He died in his 30's,
leaving behind a penniless widow with 6 children."  The donor, overcome, gave
generously, unaware that Ibn Gavirol has been dead for 600 years.

Then there are the combination stereotype jokes, such as "How do you take a
census in a [insert ethnic name] neighborhood?  Roll a nickel down the
street, count one for everybody who chases after it, and subtract one for the
[different ethnic name] who catches it."

Or "an Aggie and an Asian went fishing.  The Asian catches a fish and starts
staring at it.  [Storyteller pantomines staring at the fish.]  All of a
sudden the fish's eyes slant.  'Why, that's the most amazing thing I ever
saw,' the Aggie said.  'How did you do it.'  'Simple', said the Asian.  'I
look at the fish and think, "I'm smarter than you are."  The Aggie then
catches a fish and starts staring at it.  [Storyteller pantomines staring at
the fish, then once the suspense has built, starts making fish motions with
his mouth]."

We can see several ways to classify group-stereotype jokes and their subset
ethnic jokes.

1)  Complimentary, disparaging, or multi-group contrasting?

2)  Specific to the group being caricatured, or generic?  (The GTO story only
works with people looked down on in Ohio.  The fish joke is difficiult to
tell without an Asian, but the second character can be from any group thought
of as dumb.)

3) Type of joke.  The most commonly encountered types of group-stereotypes
used are:
  - stingy (e.g. Scottish jokes in English)
  - dumb (the Aggie above - many groups, e.g. blondes, can be used)
  - hick (not dumb but uncouth, uncultured, backwoods) e.g. "the groom is the
one in the clean T-shirt"

There are other types.  Greeks, for example, get bend-over jokes.

Polish jokes belong in two of the above categories, namely "dumb" and "hick".
 Consider  T-shirts.  The one about the groom is a "hick" joke, but the
T-shirt (you used to be able to buy them) with the upside-down Polish flag on
it was a "dumb" joke.

It is left as an exercise for the reader to classify the following:  At his
farewell party, a departing tennis-playing Pole was presented by his
ex-coworkers with a "Polish guitar", which was, of course, a tennis racket.

To conclude with a true story:  a Polish co-worker (not the tennis player)
reported to our office that he had put a "THANK GOD I'M POLISH" bumper
sticker on his car, and his WASP neighbor, watching, stood there confused.
It seems the WASP, deprived of the clue of upper- and lower-case letters, had
mentally rhymed "POLISH" with "demolish".

      - Jim Landau

While the bottom of the infamous Polish beer can reads "Open other end", the
good people of Chelm reason that if the end-user cannot tell from the writing
on the side of the can which end is up, no amount of writing on the bottom of
the can will help, and therefore Chelmisher beer cans have pop tops on both
ends.