If it involves grape drink, fried chicken and weed…
um…nevermind 
Nava, I was just relating a personal reaction that I chose to share. It may come from the experience of being a brown Mexican, growing up along the US/Mexico border, and encountering Anglo racism directed at Mexicans, even some of it cloaked as humor. Stereotypes can be cruel, but they also can be funny. I question my own reaction, but it is what it is.
What’s white and ten inches long?
Nothing.
But here’s the thing: you may have significant Scottish ethnic heritage, but you’re… Canadian, I think? Or American. But anyway, you’re not a Scot.
That’s the thing with people from countries where the majority of the population comes from relatively recent immigration, such as the US, Canada, Australia, etc.: they tend to appropriate the identity of the people from the “Old Country”, even though their actual identity is quite different. We’ve had these discussions here about Americans of Irish ancestry calling themselves “Irish”, even when travelling abroad. It’s the same thing here.
So remember two things:
[ul]
[li]while you may view yourself as Scottish, an actual person from Scotland will probably disagree, which may or may not influence what they think of you telling Scottish jokes;[/li][li]what you may think of as “Scottish culture” based on your experience growing up among people of Scottish heritage is probably significantly different from modern Scottish culture, as seen by someone in Scotland.[/li][/ul]
This is true for other nationalities and ethnicities as well, of course, not only the Scots.
For a professional comedian I think anything goes. For anyone else it depends on the purpose and intent of the jokester as well as the environment.
And I was asking. I had an Asian Costa Rican coworker who got the most amazing reactions to the combination (usually from tourists, not from other Costa Ricans), a classmate who was Catalan of Vietnamese parents, now my mother has a Nigerian baker whose café-con-leche kids yell racist insults at each other… I’m always curious about racial relationships and reactions throughout the world, and specially through la Hispanidad.
I’ll tell you an amusing story. It’s about Brazilians, not Spanish, but the difference isn’t important. The more times I’ve told it, the more uncomfortable I’ve become.
It starts with a trip to Brazil some years back. I first stopped in Rio to visit with friends. My destination was Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais. My friends in Rio were quick to tell me the people of Minas were dumb as posts. They even had a little schoolyard song about that, something like people from Minas being as strong and as smart as mules. In Belo I saw no signs of deficient metal capacity among the populace, obviously.
Now a few years later, back home in New York, I went to the DMV to register a car. I noticed to young man together, and one was wearing a T shirt that said something like “Ferdinand Alguém para Governador de Minas Gerais”. I deduced that such a shirt could only be obtained in Minas, and asked the young man “Are you from Minas?”
He said “Yes”, and I quickly said “I’ve been there”. We chatted for just a few seconds when his friend nudged him and said something in Portuguese. The young man responded to his friend, who suddenly looked at me with great suspicion, then said sonmething else in Portuguese. The young man in the T shirt similarly became unfriendly looking and asked me in English, accusingly, “How did you know I was from Minas?” Laughs and headslaps resulted when I pointed at his shirt.
Now encountering two slow-witted young men from Minas at the DMV in New York could hardly cast an aspersion over all the residents of that state in Brazil. But the problem is the reaction of Brazilians I tell that to. Some have laughed with a cruel glee at hearing the proof of their prejudice. When I tell it as an American, it’s just an amusing anecdote. But to some Brazilians it is expression of superiority that bothers me. I can imagine the child from Minas who moves to another state and hears the schoolyard song that calls him stupid.
So I don’t know where to put the line, and increasingly I avoid all such humor because I don’t want to amuse those who regard it the wrong way. Which is a shame, because I know some great jokes that would be reasonably offensive to some people.
ETA: I’m just telling this story to Nava. So everybody else, don’t read it.
I’m a bit surprised that the majority of votes seem to effectively be answering “yes” to the OP. In my view either politically incorrect jokes that are actually funny are okay, or they’re not, and the person they’re coming out of isn’t really that relevant.
People seem here to be confusing humour and prejudice/bigotry masquerading as humour. Either a black joke is funny or it isn’t, and I fail to understand why a black joke that was funny ten minutes ago coming out of the mouth of a black person magically becomes unfunny when it’s told by a non-black person. If it’s a joke and funny, rather than a simple racial slur played to get laughs, then it’ll be funny no matter who’s telling it.
I similarly fail to understand the notion that a person of any non-white ethnicity making fun of white people is okay, but a white person doing so to any other ethnicity is automatically bad. Either racism is okay or it’s not, otherwise we’re into “some are equal but some are more equal than others” territory.
As for the word nigger - I’m white and don’t see why it can’t ever pass my lips, it’s only a word (although if it was ever used by me as a slur or a description of a person I should rightly be called on what would rightly be described as racism). I don’t agree that anyone can own a word and I refuse to be told what I can and can’t say by someone when I’m not trying to be be offensive. Tell me not to use the word cunt because it’s offensive equally to everyone and I could see the case for that, and can understand it could genuinely be upsetting for anyone at all. Given I don’t try and go around offending people for the sake of it I don’t particularly want to use language which I know reasonably will upset people (key word there is reasonably), unless it’s actually merited by someone of course.
That’s pretty much the long and short of it, there.
When I was in elementary school, Polish jokes were very popular. (For those who aren’t familiar, they’re about how stupid Polish people are, often fatally so.) I had a very obviously Polish name, and got teased a lot. Even though I was way too shy to actually stand up for myself, at least I could be confident in my own mind that those kids were mean and wrong for telling these jokes, and that I was not stupid (or at least, not just because I was Polish), no matter what they thought.
But I also had a teacher who I loved and admired who was Polish. And one day, she told some Polish jokes, saying, “I can tell them, because I’m Polish.” And I didn’t know what to make of that. Was it still mean or wrong if you made fun of yourself? I knew that it was “just a joke”, but I also understood that the reason a joke is funny (if it is) is that there’s some kernel of truth behind it. Otherwise, it’s just nonsense. So did she really think Polish people were stupid? Did she think she was stupid? Did she think I was stupid? Ultimately, it was more hurtful to me than when other people said it, because I couldn’t just dismiss it, because it was “okay” for her to say it.
I think it can be very funny when people make fun of things they actually are, or have actually experienced, even if (sometimes *especially *if) it would sound hurtful or callous coming from someone who isn’t that thing or hasn’t had the same experience. But a mean insult is still a mean insult, even if it’s self-directed.
Jokes can offend people for different overlapping reasons. If you’re joking about it because you think group X really are stupid, lazy and selfish, the joke may possibly be funny in its own right, but it should (I hope) obviously be offensive to most people instead/as well, and often gets a lot of its humour value only from the “Hey, everyone says I can’t admit what slobs group X are, but now I am, tee hee”.
If you’re joking about a negative stereotype of group X that everyone agrees has some truth in it, including group X, then it definitely can be made affectionately, and it’s common for people from group X to do so. You still have to exercise some restraint. Some people live every day of their lives with people spontaneously telling them they’re bad people because they’re gay/black/Jewish/vegetarian, etc, etc. If you’re used to that, and someone comes out with an entirely affectionate joke, you may well be primed to be upset, not because you don’t have a sense of humour, and not because you’re stupid, but because jokes about group X USUALLY come from people who hate you and want you to hate yourself.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell affectionate jokes about people, but it does mean you should be aware of it. It’s not a matter of “this joke is usually ok, therefore it’s ALWAYS ok regardless of circumstance, and anyone who dislikes it must be attempting to ban all humour and is an idiot and is in the wrong and should be publicly rejected from society” or “you upset me, therefore you’re evil and should never tell jokes”, it’s a matter of “this joke is usually ok, but be prepeared for occasional faux pas that aren’t anyone’s fault.”
Similarly, some things are unpredictably massively upsetting to someone. Someone who has a parent just die is likely to be upset in ANY conversation about parents dying, joke or not. Sometimes you can avoid this – if you know 1 in 4 people are likely to be offended by something, don’t tell it to an audience of more than 4 people. Sometimes you can’t, and people have to take their chances.
So, telling jokes about group X, if you are group X, there’s good reason for that to be non-offensive, because it should be more obvious it’s not an attack. But it’s not automatically ok, because it may not be OBVIOUS you’re from group X, or it may perpetuate a very harmful stereotype without you realising it, or you may talk about something people are sensitive about without realising it.
TLDR: usually ok, but you can’t have the internet divide everything into “offensive” and “not offensive” for you, you have to use your brain.
Korean-American teenager walks into a bar. Bartender says “hey, we don’t serve your kind in here!”
“Koreans?”
“No, kids, you idiot! This is a bar!”
Goodnight everybody, you’ve been awesome!
Is it ok? I mean, yeah, you can do whatever you please. No worries there.
The question is, are you prepared to deal with the consequences of how others perceive you after making such a joke? Personally, if you lead with jokes about your own ethnicity/race - first, I’d have to be pretty sure you were of that group, because I know names and phenotypical features don’t tell the whole story. I’d assume you were a bigot at best, if I didn’t know.
If I did indeed know that you were from the group, I’d start questioning your judgment. Why would you expose me to this kind of humor? What are you saying about your feelings about the group of which you are a member?
I’d also wonder what jokes you say about my race/ethnicity when I’m not around.
Now I do riff on how Black folks act… to other Black folks I know well. And I usually include myself in that riffage. I can be Black and still be prejudiced to people from a certain place, socioeconomic class, whatever.
Dare to dream, Shade. 
Now, that is a universal joke.
And funny, if delivered properly.
And visually, you did well.
Thanks.
How many white people does it take to change a lightbulb?
One.
I’m with Tripolar - yes, no and maybe.
If it’s an actual non-PC joke like the old stereotyped racist ones, then I’d say probably no, because a) they’re perpetuating negative stereotypes and b) they’re usually crap jokes. Just because it’s a black (etc) person telling them doesn’t automatically make them funny. Taking those old jokes and twisting them can be very funny though.
And a lot of comedians do riff on their background in very funny ways. Shappi Korsandi, for example, makes a lot of jokes about Islam, and particularly being a Muslim woman, that just wouldn’t work coming from someone who didn’t fit those labels.
For example, these two are quite good standalone jokes (which is why I found them in a quick google), but for me they work better from some one who is Iranian:
What Iran needs now is a more modern leader – a mullah lite.
For exiled Iranian writers, the closest thing we have to a literary award is a fatwah.
(Muller Light, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a well-known brand of yoghurt).
That sounds more like the telling of old anti-semitic jokes.
This is far, far less significant than gender, ethnicity etc, but I’m originally from Essex (England) and in the eighties and 90s there were a slew of Essex girl jokes, so much so that everywhere I went I was met with a barrage of them. I started telling them myself partly to make people laugh and partly just to get it over with.
There’s a long line of very funny and successful Jewish comedians who would argue that it’s more than just “okay.”
Oh yeah? What are they being lined up for?
Yes.
In general, it’s OK to make fun of a group upward of or equal to your group in terms of privilege.
Comedy’s often about knocking people off perches. So we can all make fun of rich people, but rich people making fun of the middle class or lower class is mean and tasteless.
White people are the perceived privileged class in American culture. It’s OK for anybody to make fun of white people, but white people can only make fun of themselves.
And I, for one, am not all butthurt about it.
Here’s a non-race example: Soprano jokes. I love them! I’m a soprano, so I can tell them. (In addition, I am primarily trained as an instrumentalist, so as an extra bonus I don’t have to feel bound by the soprano stereotypes!) I think soprano jokes are totally amusing when sopranos (or men) tell them – but if an alto told them, I’d be suspicious there might be some hidden (or not-so-hidden) undercurrent of negative feeling (jealousy? superiority?). *
That’s my attitude towards ethnic jokes as well: it’s really hard, when one is not a member of the ethnicity, to separate out the potential negative feelings from the humor. It can happen with one’s own ethnicity as well, but one generally assumes that the speaker has at least some fondness for his/her own race, so it becomes more okay.
How do you know it’s a soprano at the door?
She can’t find the key and doesn’t know when to come in.
*This should not stop anyone here from telling any soprano jokes, just because you happen to be an alto! Like I say, I love them, and I can’t tell over the internet what your voice part is 