Where does the popular stereotype of Polish people come from? That they’re stupid, I mean. I’m pretty sure this school of thought exists mostly in the US. Why not stupid Ukranians? or Laotians? Is it because of the historical helplessness of the country as a whole?
Karolina Zaniesienko
This stereotype is new to me.
You’ve honestly never heard of “Polish jokes”?
I am a Brit, we have Irish jokes.
Welcome to the boards by the way.
Thank you kindly.
Ohhh … I see. Well, that makes sense, then, and it also supports my belief that this is something that’s common mostly in America.
Almost every ethnic group that immigrated to the US in large waves had jokes made about them. They are an easy target because they are new and English is their second language. Poles, Italians, Chinese, Irish, etc. It is easy to pass off someone as stupid just because they speak English poorly.
In that case, why did the stereotype of stupid Poles enter popular culture while the others fell by the wayside?
Here’s a plausible origin for polish jokes.
I’m not sure that its true, but authoritative answers seem to be a bit thin on the ground here.
Well, well, well…looks like we both Googled. 
Being British, the “stupid Poles” jokes always seemed strange to me, especially since living in Slough there was a large Polish imigrant population (not the largest imigrant population in the area though) and there was never to my knowledge any feeling about the Polish people being more stupid than anyone else.
Cheers, Bippy
In Minnesota, it’s probably more common to make fun of Norweigan immigrants than it is Polish ones, if only because so few Polish people historically settled the Northern Midwest.
My guess is people generally make fun of whoever’s around that’s different. It’s stupid, but it’s human.
History channel tells the story of Hitler arresting any and all Polish higher-ups. Scientists, doctors, engineers, business men, etc. That left the country with an abundance of those with menial jobs, laborers and such. His thinking was to remore any one who saw what was comming and might do something about it. The’stupid’ class was left behind.
There is a mildly amusing doonsbury cartoon where BD tells a Pollack joke. The bartender says that Pollack jokes don’t work as well as they used to and BD replies that he is thinking of switching to Italians.
That’s an angle I’ve heard before, and I think that there’s something there.
I grew up in Poland, and I remeber that it was nearly impossible to get a visa in order to go to the US. I was told that the governement at the time was concerned that everyone would rush elsewhere to escape post-communist hardships. There was an intervew you had to go through in order to recieve a visa, and I think they tried to pick the people who had something to tie them to the country, like a big, poor family or farmland, as well as people who were not likely to get a high-paying job once they got to America. Countryfolk. Maybe that had something to do with it …
An interesting side note: Most of the Polish jokes I’ve heard used hear, I’ve also heard in Poland in the guise of Russian jokes.
Karolina ZaniesienkoHere in California, we don’t make fun of Polish people. We make fun of people from all the other states where people live who make fun of Polish people. More material.
Today, it’s more PC to make fun of Poles than, say Mexicans, or blacks. Poles are white, and thus people don’t necessarily think of a Pollack joke as being “racist.”
Around here, usually the jokes are featuring “Dumb Kentuckians” substituted for Polish people.
Q: How do you sink a Polish submarine?
A: Knock on the door.
Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help myself.
A couple of years ago, I went to a company meeting in Europe for a week. Wound up hanging out with the guy from Poland. he had a great sense of humor. (I think I do also). So we would go out to dinner and tell jokes. All the jokes we could recall. seemed that about 85-90% of the jokes he told I knew, and about the same for the ones I told. The big difference was as karomon pointed out, he changed the nationality to Russian.
I told a dumb Italian joke he knew it as a dumb Russian joke. He told a drunk Russian joke, I knew it as a drunk Irish joke. About the only ones he didn’t know were the Scotish sheep jokes.
Why does a scot wear a kilt?
Sheep can hear zippers