Ethnic joke
Encyclopedia
An ethnic joke is a humorous remark relating to an ethnic, racial or cultural group, often referring to a stereotype
of the group in question for its punchline.
Ethnic jokes have been around since people first noticed they were different from one another, and ethnocentrism and a sense of ethnic identity appeared. Jokes feed upon difference and distinctions (not only ethnic, of course) and if one of the functions of ethnic jokes is to ridicule and depreciate these in-out groups, another function is to maintain and strengthen a sense of one’s identity in some in-group.
It may be that ethnic humour helps us deal with hostility verbally instead of physically, but these slurs also reinforce our stereotypes and sometimes lead to calls for violence.
Ethnic jokes are often considered to be offensive and as a form of hate speech
. Perceived as such, they may sometimes be referred to as race jokes, or racist jokes. But the definition of what constitute a race, ethnicity or a social group varies from one nation or society to the next, about who is considered a racial minority or ethnic group.
Ethnic jokes come and go with social change
, particularly with waves of immigration
from one country to another, but it is also based on who the media in that particular country hates the most; for example, Polish
jokes, which were common in the United States
were unique in that sadly for Polish people there were powerful anti-Polish Bigots in Hollywood and the US TV media who introduced hateful Polish jokes to the American public in the 1960s in the hope that the American people would eventually have the same anti-Polish prejudice that Hollywood and media elites had. Hollywood, NBC-TV & CBS-TV for example did not tell the American public that so called "Polish jokes" aka subhuman intelligence jokes about Polish people, were hypocritically taken from Nazi propaganda despite the fact Hollywood and NBC-TV and CBS-TV claimed to be anti-Nazi (this is discussed on the Polish American Journal website) The tremendous power of TV and movie imagery was used to malign the image of Polish people as having inferior intelligence, despite the fact that Polish Americans are one of the most economically successful ethnic groups in the US. In 2010, a documentary film, Polack, explores the source of the Polish joke in America. Many Polish Americans feel this Hollywood "movie", with the title of an anti-Polish slur, is just more proof of Hollywood's hate campaign against Polish people Kind of similarly, Irish jokes have become far less common in the United Kingdom
as the social status
of Irish people has risen with increased wealth
in Ireland, the consequent reduction in Irish itinerant labour, and the absorption of Irish people into the community and therefore the UK media was more tolerant of the Irish.
But in other cases the ethnic jokes are addressed against those who are historically seen as the aggressors, like the multiple jokes published in Mexico about the Americans (also called gringos there). Similar jokes have also been published in Barcelona
. However, Jew jokes and Italian American
jokes in the USA have generated controversy on the level of how offensive they can be, though not as politically charged than, say, African American
or black jokes told by non-blacks in the USA are viewed as rude, immoral and socially unacceptable.
As public awareness of racism has increased, racial and ethnic jokes have become increasingly socially unacceptable in recent years, and have become socially taboo
to tell in public in many regions. This can however, depend on who is telling the joke. For example, it may be deemed offensive for a white person to make a joke about Asians, whereas it would be more acceptable for an Asian to make a similar joke about their own culture, or an Asian make a joke about white people can be variously funny or offending to some extent. Many comedians
from diverse ethnic backgrounds do this on a regular basis, about whites, other groups and themselves.
It is sometimes held that such stereotypes must contain a grain of truth; research suggests that this is most often not the case. However, it is claimed by some that ethnic jokes have a basis in fact, and some ethnic jokes deliberately try to prove their point, for instance:
, who is the butt of the joke, belongs to an ethnic group singled out for abuse. Such jokes are often interchangeable, with the stigma
tized group varying from region to region (e.g. the English tell such jokes about the Irish, Canadians
about people from the province of Newfoundland, or "Newfie
"s; the Chukchi, the native people of Chukotka, the most remote northeast corner of Russia, are the most common minority targeted in Russia). And in the USA, jokes about inhabitants of the state of Oklahoma, or "Okies" date back from the 1930s when many migrated to California
as a result of the Dust bowl
disaster.
In other ethnic jokes, the targeted ethnic group is one that has historically been associated with the privileged ruling class, as in the "Jan van der Merwe" jokes of South Africa
, which make fun of Afrikaner
s (Jan van der Merwe being a stereotypical Dutch name). People with different skin colour may be singled out for offensive jokes, with Black people
being an example of a common target in certain countries. People of Pakistan
i and Bangladesh
i descent, who are a substantial minority group
in England, are the target of similar jokes. Jews
(and sometimes Poles
as well) are also a common target of ethnic jokes within Europe and North America..
Some ethnic targets, such as the gallegos (people from Nueva Galicia
in Mexico or Galicia in Spain) are a target for ethnic jokes in Latin America (e.g. Costa Rica or Argentina). The term gallego is also applied to people from Galicia in Eastern Europe, but in Latin America it almost exclusively refers to Spaniards living in Nueva Galicia or in Galicia Spain. In Costa Rica
, there are Nicaragua
n jokes, due to the influx of Nicaraguan immigrants (often illegal) looking for jobs. And Mexican
jokes in the USA have became unpopular, due to social protest by Mexican American
s and immigrant rights groups.
When talking about ethnic humour, distinctions are sometimes made as to whether the humour comes from the inside or the outside, the idea being that when self-mocking humour comes from the inside, it pushes out the boundaries of acceptable or expected behaviours by making fun of one or more of the group characteristics known to the insider. Complimentary humour coming from the inside works to increase group pride and satisfaction. In contrast, jokes coming from the outside are more likely to be critical or insulting. And even if they are no more critical than insider jokes, they are viewed more negatively, as their effect is to tighten the boundaries or freeze the stereotypes because the outsider is not in a position to bring about group change. What these distinctions ignore is that insult humour is only one kind of joking.
Most of the researchers like Davies and Leon Rappoport have argued that ethnic jokes do not propagate ethnic stereotypes, but are often a way of positive interaction between communities.
Other examples : In France, jokes about Belgian people, in Quebec, about inhabitants of Drummondville, in Germany, about people of East Frisia
, in Austria, about people of the Burgenland
state, in Syria, about inhabitants of Homs
.
, author of this theory, has posed the main arguments in his article Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries, published in 1982. His approach is based on Victor Raskin
's (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH), or to be more precise, on the arguments connected with ethnic humor on binary oppositions. While Raskin merely describes the main binary oppositions providing examples mostly from the Jewish humor
), Davies explores the situations where the scripts apply; for example, he has discovered that the most common opposition, stupid/clever, is applied under particular circumstances in the social reality of two ethnic groups concerned.
Links have been established between the scripts of the jokes and social facts, such as, for example, modern society's hesitance in regarding people's primary actions such as working, eating and drinking, sexual life and warfare. Issues related to these actions are present in more or less all societies; the societies where these are absent also lack the corresponding jokes (e.g., jokes about alcohol are missing in Muslim and Mormon jokelore) http://www.folklore.ee/folklore. The anecdote tradition of each individual culture are based on the presupposition that the joke centers on divergence from the norm and average.
Davies in his monograph published in 1990 has surmised that "Jokes in every country (or reasonably homogeneous cultural and linguistic domain) have certain targets for stupidity jokes - people who dwell on the edge of that nation or domain and who are perceived as culturally ambiguous by the dominant people of the center. In addition, they will likely be rustic people or immigrants in search of unskilled and low-prestige manual work. They are to a great extent similar to the joke-tellers themselves, share the same cultural background or even speak a similar or identical language." According to Davies, ethnic jokes are centered around the three main themes of stupidity, canniness and sexual behavior.
Stupidity - already discussed.
Canniness - As the counterpart of stupidity jokes, there exist jokes about canniness that usually depict unambiguous, well-integrated and economically successful group of people, either only locally known (e.g. the population of the Laihia (Laihela) village in Finland) or international (e.g. the Jews).
Sexual behavior - There are also more culture-specific jokes about ludicrous behavior concerning militarism, alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, etc. These jokes are based on the cultural background of the object of ridicule and the teller of the joke, and their mutual attitude towards the problems with the areas mentioned.
Davies is featured in the 2010 documentary film, Polack, exploring the source of the Polish joke.
Ethnic stereotype
An ethnic stereotype is a generalized representation of an ethnic group, composed of what are thought to be typical characteristics of members of the group.Ethnic stereotypes are commonly portrayed in ethnic jokes.-Ethnic stereotypes:*African Americans...
of the group in question for its punchline.
Ethnic jokes have been around since people first noticed they were different from one another, and ethnocentrism and a sense of ethnic identity appeared. Jokes feed upon difference and distinctions (not only ethnic, of course) and if one of the functions of ethnic jokes is to ridicule and depreciate these in-out groups, another function is to maintain and strengthen a sense of one’s identity in some in-group.
It may be that ethnic humour helps us deal with hostility verbally instead of physically, but these slurs also reinforce our stereotypes and sometimes lead to calls for violence.
Ethnic jokes are often considered to be offensive and as a form of hate speech
Hate speech
Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....
. Perceived as such, they may sometimes be referred to as race jokes, or racist jokes. But the definition of what constitute a race, ethnicity or a social group varies from one nation or society to the next, about who is considered a racial minority or ethnic group.
Ethnic jokes come and go with social change
Social change
Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...
, particularly with waves of immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
from one country to another, but it is also based on who the media in that particular country hates the most; for example, Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
jokes, which were common in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
were unique in that sadly for Polish people there were powerful anti-Polish Bigots in Hollywood and the US TV media who introduced hateful Polish jokes to the American public in the 1960s in the hope that the American people would eventually have the same anti-Polish prejudice that Hollywood and media elites had. Hollywood, NBC-TV & CBS-TV for example did not tell the American public that so called "Polish jokes" aka subhuman intelligence jokes about Polish people, were hypocritically taken from Nazi propaganda despite the fact Hollywood and NBC-TV and CBS-TV claimed to be anti-Nazi (this is discussed on the Polish American Journal website) The tremendous power of TV and movie imagery was used to malign the image of Polish people as having inferior intelligence, despite the fact that Polish Americans are one of the most economically successful ethnic groups in the US. In 2010, a documentary film, Polack, explores the source of the Polish joke in America. Many Polish Americans feel this Hollywood "movie", with the title of an anti-Polish slur, is just more proof of Hollywood's hate campaign against Polish people Kind of similarly, Irish jokes have become far less common in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
as the social status
Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
of Irish people has risen with increased wealth
Wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...
in Ireland, the consequent reduction in Irish itinerant labour, and the absorption of Irish people into the community and therefore the UK media was more tolerant of the Irish.
But in other cases the ethnic jokes are addressed against those who are historically seen as the aggressors, like the multiple jokes published in Mexico about the Americans (also called gringos there). Similar jokes have also been published in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
. However, Jew jokes and Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
jokes in the USA have generated controversy on the level of how offensive they can be, though not as politically charged than, say, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
or black jokes told by non-blacks in the USA are viewed as rude, immoral and socially unacceptable.
As public awareness of racism has increased, racial and ethnic jokes have become increasingly socially unacceptable in recent years, and have become socially taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
to tell in public in many regions. This can however, depend on who is telling the joke. For example, it may be deemed offensive for a white person to make a joke about Asians, whereas it would be more acceptable for an Asian to make a similar joke about their own culture, or an Asian make a joke about white people can be variously funny or offending to some extent. Many comedians
Comedians
Comedians are a type of entertainer who tell jokes.Comedians can also refer to:* Comedians , a 1954 film* Comedians , a 1975 play by Trevor Griffiths* The Comedians, a 1940 concert suite by Dmitry Kabalevsky...
from diverse ethnic backgrounds do this on a regular basis, about whites, other groups and themselves.
It is sometimes held that such stereotypes must contain a grain of truth; research suggests that this is most often not the case. However, it is claimed by some that ethnic jokes have a basis in fact, and some ethnic jokes deliberately try to prove their point, for instance:
Racial targets
Ethnic jokes are often aimed at minorities within certain regions, or peoples from neighbouring areas. A common ethnic joke format is the "stupid person" joke, where the stock characterStock character
A Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...
, who is the butt of the joke, belongs to an ethnic group singled out for abuse. Such jokes are often interchangeable, with the stigma
Social stigma
Social stigma is the severe disapproval of or discontent with a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.Almost all stigma is based on a person differing from social or cultural norms...
tized group varying from region to region (e.g. the English tell such jokes about the Irish, Canadians
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
about people from the province of Newfoundland, or "Newfie
Newfie
Newfie is a colloquial term used in Canada for someone who is from Newfoundland. It appears in a 1942 dictionary of slang; at the time, 'Newfie' was used as often to refer to Newfoundland itself as to people from Newfoundland .The term 'Newfie' has been applied to the Newfoundland people, the...
"s; the Chukchi, the native people of Chukotka, the most remote northeast corner of Russia, are the most common minority targeted in Russia). And in the USA, jokes about inhabitants of the state of Oklahoma, or "Okies" date back from the 1930s when many migrated to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
as a result of the Dust bowl
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...
disaster.
In other ethnic jokes, the targeted ethnic group is one that has historically been associated with the privileged ruling class, as in the "Jan van der Merwe" jokes of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, which make fun of Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
s (Jan van der Merwe being a stereotypical Dutch name). People with different skin colour may be singled out for offensive jokes, with Black people
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
being an example of a common target in certain countries. People of Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i and Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
i descent, who are a substantial minority group
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
in England, are the target of similar jokes. Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
(and sometimes Poles
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
as well) are also a common target of ethnic jokes within Europe and North America..
Some ethnic targets, such as the gallegos (people from Nueva Galicia
Nueva Galicia
El Nuevo Reino de Galicia or Nueva Galicia was an autonomous kingdom of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It was named after Galicia in Spain...
in Mexico or Galicia in Spain) are a target for ethnic jokes in Latin America (e.g. Costa Rica or Argentina). The term gallego is also applied to people from Galicia in Eastern Europe, but in Latin America it almost exclusively refers to Spaniards living in Nueva Galicia or in Galicia Spain. In Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
, there are Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
n jokes, due to the influx of Nicaraguan immigrants (often illegal) looking for jobs. And Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
jokes in the USA have became unpopular, due to social protest by Mexican American
Mexican American
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...
s and immigrant rights groups.
When talking about ethnic humour, distinctions are sometimes made as to whether the humour comes from the inside or the outside, the idea being that when self-mocking humour comes from the inside, it pushes out the boundaries of acceptable or expected behaviours by making fun of one or more of the group characteristics known to the insider. Complimentary humour coming from the inside works to increase group pride and satisfaction. In contrast, jokes coming from the outside are more likely to be critical or insulting. And even if they are no more critical than insider jokes, they are viewed more negatively, as their effect is to tighten the boundaries or freeze the stereotypes because the outsider is not in a position to bring about group change. What these distinctions ignore is that insult humour is only one kind of joking.
Most of the researchers like Davies and Leon Rappoport have argued that ethnic jokes do not propagate ethnic stereotypes, but are often a way of positive interaction between communities.
Other examples : In France, jokes about Belgian people, in Quebec, about inhabitants of Drummondville, in Germany, about people of East Frisia
East Frisia
East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....
, in Austria, about people of the Burgenland
Burgenland
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east...
state, in Syria, about inhabitants of Homs
Homs
Homs , previously known as Emesa , is a city in western Syria and the capital of the Homs Governorate. It is above sea level and is located north of Damascus...
.
Theory of ethnic humor
The predominant and most widely known theory of ethnic humor attempts to discover social regularities in the anecdote traditions of different countries by contextually describing jokes. Professor Christie DaviesChristie Davies
Christie Davies is a British sociologist, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Reading, England, the author of many articles and books on criminology, the sociology of morality, censorship, and humor...
, author of this theory, has posed the main arguments in his article Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries, published in 1982. His approach is based on Victor Raskin
Victor Raskin
Victor Raskin is a distinguished professor of linguistics at Purdue University. He is the author of Semantic Mechanisms of Humor and Ontological Semantics and founding editor of Humor, the journal for the International Society of Humor Studies.He is an associate director and founding faculty...
's (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH), or to be more precise, on the arguments connected with ethnic humor on binary oppositions. While Raskin merely describes the main binary oppositions providing examples mostly from the Jewish humor
Jewish humor
Jewish humour is the long tradition of humour in Judaism dating back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient mid-east, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal, self-deprecating, crude, and often anecdotal humour originating in Eastern Europe and which took root in the United...
), Davies explores the situations where the scripts apply; for example, he has discovered that the most common opposition, stupid/clever, is applied under particular circumstances in the social reality of two ethnic groups concerned.
Links have been established between the scripts of the jokes and social facts, such as, for example, modern society's hesitance in regarding people's primary actions such as working, eating and drinking, sexual life and warfare. Issues related to these actions are present in more or less all societies; the societies where these are absent also lack the corresponding jokes (e.g., jokes about alcohol are missing in Muslim and Mormon jokelore) http://www.folklore.ee/folklore. The anecdote tradition of each individual culture are based on the presupposition that the joke centers on divergence from the norm and average.
Davies in his monograph published in 1990 has surmised that "Jokes in every country (or reasonably homogeneous cultural and linguistic domain) have certain targets for stupidity jokes - people who dwell on the edge of that nation or domain and who are perceived as culturally ambiguous by the dominant people of the center. In addition, they will likely be rustic people or immigrants in search of unskilled and low-prestige manual work. They are to a great extent similar to the joke-tellers themselves, share the same cultural background or even speak a similar or identical language." According to Davies, ethnic jokes are centered around the three main themes of stupidity, canniness and sexual behavior.
Stupidity - already discussed.
Canniness - As the counterpart of stupidity jokes, there exist jokes about canniness that usually depict unambiguous, well-integrated and economically successful group of people, either only locally known (e.g. the population of the Laihia (Laihela) village in Finland) or international (e.g. the Jews).
Sexual behavior - There are also more culture-specific jokes about ludicrous behavior concerning militarism, alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, etc. These jokes are based on the cultural background of the object of ridicule and the teller of the joke, and their mutual attitude towards the problems with the areas mentioned.
Davies is featured in the 2010 documentary film, Polack, exploring the source of the Polish joke.
See also
- Allport's ScaleAllport's ScaleAllport's Scale is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society. It is also referred to as Allport's Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination or Allport's Scale of Prejudice. It was devised by psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954 ....
- Jewish humour
- Black stereotypes
- Margaret ChoMargaret ChoMargaret Cho is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and recording artist. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music...
, American comedian of Korean descent known for self-humor of Koreans and Asian Americans.