Why are Polish people often satirized in jokes as being stupid? I just know I went to a predominantly Polish high school as a child. And it was a running joke. Kids there often joked that they were stupid, although it was all tongue-in-cheek of course.
So where did the joke originate? And is it (forgive me for saying this) at all based on truth in some way?
“Stupid” jokes are generally told about whoever is the prevailing ethnic minority in a particular area. Before the Polish, the general butt of these jokes was often the Irish. In my Irish-Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, the Irish and the Italians told the same “stupid” jokes about each other with the roles reversed.
The Polish as the butt of these jokes probably started out in Chicago or other parts of the Mid West where there were large numbers of immigrants from eastern Europe. To my recollection, the Polish first became the generic subject of such jokes throughout the US in the 1970s when they started to be told on TV on programs like Laugh-In and All in the Family. I never heard a “Polish” joke in the Bronx in the 1960s. I first started to hear them when I moved to Colorado in the 1970s.
There is a long history of Polish persecution especially in Europe but I don’t think Polish jokes in the U.S. are directly related to that. Polish jokes belong to a category of joke that depend on an exaggerated stereotype of some group whether or not it is based on reality. The term ‘Polack’ is usually used in these jokes as a type of made up derogatory term. Polack technically refers to Polish people but it is generally recognized by both the joke teller and the audience that is based on fictionalized stereotypes. These types of jokes require this type of common subject to work properly. Polish or Polack jokes aren’t the only jokes of this type. ‘Aggie’ jokes, referring to Texas A&M students, are substituted for Polacks in some parts of the country.
Polish people may have been picked as the subject of these jokes because many immigrated to the U.S. as poor immigrant workers but that doesn’t explain why other groups aren’t used for the same types of jokes. Jokes against hispanics or blacks don’t follow the same pattern for example. It is most likely a humor trend that became embedded in American culture which is why it works in the first place.
When I moved to Texas, all the stupid Polish jokes I heard growing up became stupid Aggie jokes.
Yeah, this kind of joke exists in many cultures. In India, the equivalent of a Polock joke is a Sardarji (Sikh) joke. (Note that “Sardarji” is a term of respect, not a put-down.)
While the upthread comment is that those type jokes seem to be applied to any local subgroup (hillbillies, Aggies, etc.), the Polish usage seems broader.
In truth to the idea that they arose due to being on the wrong side of a technology leap - horse mounted troops against tanks in WWI?
This seems very unlikely to me. I’m with the idea that these jokes started among people who lived in proximity to large numbers of Polish immigrants, not among people who were aware of Polish military history.
Grew up in Western Wisconsin which is mostly Norwegian, Polish and German descent. Heard a whole lot of Polish jokes growing up.
Ancient Greeks apparently had similar jokes about Abderites (people from the city-state of Abdera).
"An Abderite sees a eunuch walking down the street with a beautiful woman. The Abderite asks the Eunuch ‘is this woman your wife?’ to which the eunuch replies ‘I’m a eunuch, and we’re not allowed to have wives.’ The Abderite says “I see. Is she your daughter, then?”
Still kind of funny.
Which taken as a whole, is actually pretty solid. Poland was a major state for a very long time. It just had the misfortune to have a serious structural weakness in terms of government at a critical moment in history, which led to its temporary partition and disappearance in the 18th century.
In my hometown, Polish-Amerians are one of the “Big Three” ethnic groups, along with Italians and Irish. Compared to those other groups, Poles had a greater tendency to be working-class, and embrace certain elements of Great Lakes/Rust Belt blue collar culture; bowling, bingo, volunteer fire departments, and the like. If you visited a well-off neighborhood, you would see the usual English, Italian, Irish and Jewish names, but very, very few ending in ski or czak.
The predominantly Polish neighborhoods and suburbs in the area were known for being very clean, but most were also solidly working- or lower-middle class. Also, Polish-Americans were had a predilection for adorning their otherwise perfectly manicured lawns with statues, ornaments, and the like.
Up until about 20 years ago, Polish-Americans in my hometown also had an unusual accent; very staccato, very dental, nouns and places often preceded with “dat” and “dat der”, and sentences ending in “der” - “Park-dat-der-Aries-der-in-da-strit-der.” These weren’t immigrants, but second and “turd” generation Americans.
Stupid? Absolutely not. However, far more likely to be working-class and blue-collar. It’s changing, but in my hometown, Polish-American culture still has a very strong blue-collar bent.
Which came first, the “little moron” jokes, or the same jokes with various ethnicities in place of “little moron”?
I was raised on Army bases all over the U.S. and in Germany, and I’ve been hearing Polish jokes as far back as I can remember (granted, I’m only 40 now). The standard opening to a joke during my elementary school years was “There’s a German, an American, and a Polack.” It certainly never occurred to me during most of that time that anyone would/should be truly offended. In fact, one of my friends whose family was about a quarter Polish claimed that Poles, in their turn, made jokes about the Finns.
It does occur to me, while pondering the subject, that some kids would interrupt the joke by saying “Hey, the Pope’s Polish” (subtext: don’t make fun of the pontiff), but this was usually waved away with a reminder that it was, in fact, only a joke.
As an aside, in Hawaii the Portuguese get the honor of being the subject of stupid jokes.
Also, the Chinese are the target of what would be cheap/miserly Jewish jokes in the continental US.
According to folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, Polish jokes replaced little moron jokes.
In France, Belgians are the idiots while Scots and Auvergnats (French people from the central region, who would come to Paris to make a killing in the coal delivery business) are the misers.
This is interesting, as I used to hear Polish jokes all the time in the late 60s and into the 70s. But at least in my experience, they all but stopped in the late 70s when Lech Walensa (sp?) became prominent during the Polish Solidarity movement.
I’ve no doubt they’re still being told, it’s just that I don’t hear them with anything close to the frequency I did as a kid. Mostly I hear hillbilly jokes or other ethnicities, just not Poles.
The Polish Hussars were–along with the vaunted Swiss mercenaries–some of the most feared cavalry forces in Europe, and had developed techniques for charge and maneuvering that were superior to other cavalries. Unfortunately, with the coming of mechanized armor, the superiority of horse-mounted cavalry was negated. As a result, the hussars were overcome by technological innovation. In response to encroaching tanks, there are at least a few instances of hussars taping explosives to their sabers and charging a tank formation; those surviving would embed their saber into the tread, disabling the tank and usually dying in the process.
While this is sometimes reported as the motivation for “Polack” jokes, the term as a pejorative seems to extend back into the 19th century.
In the Midwest where I grew up, many jokes started with “There’s a nigger, a kike, and a polack…” These kind of jokes were told at school and in church, and it never occurred to people that anyone would be offended (or at least, not anyone worthy of notice). Of course, there were no blacks, Jews, or Polish people around to bear offense.
Stranger
There was a similar tactic employed against formations of invading forces in which the Hussars would lob sticks of dynamite into a group of enemy soldiers. It backfired, however, as the enemy would invariably light the dynamite and then throw it back.
Because despite strong and critical contributions to analytic philosophy (I’m thinking of Lesniewski [spelled wrong, but I shall not make the l with the hash mark through it] and lots of others), “they” turned to Heideggerian anti-realist phenomenology. That’s why. And there they came over the hill carrying a watermelon.