EXCEPT IF YOU'RE BELGIAN

Posting a conversation here that took place on someone else's blog.
I am the commenter identified as 'Bad Penguin'.



General Jones
How do you know Chinese people move into your neighborhood ?
The Mexicans start to buy car insurance
Yesterday, 5:03:07 PM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
QUOTE: How do you know Chinese people move into your neighborhood ?
The Mexicans start to buy car insurance END QUOTE.

That is probably the most fricking bigoted racist thing I have seen in these comments! Tell me, General Jones, do you have ANY friends? Or are you so tightly sequestered in your own vile pit that no one, not even your bastard children and your inbred kin stick their long lizard-like necks out to contact you?
Yesterday, 6:19:11 PM


Guest 2
Oh geez. whats with this ethnic hypersensitivity? Its a joke. Why is it amongst Israelis, they tell jokes right and left about different ethnicities (crude ones too) and everyone laughs, and here people call each other bigots? Its a joke, nothing more.
Today, 12:05:06 AM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
Guest 2 - Are you dense? Stereotypic jokes are not just jokes, they reflect attitudes. When a Goy tells a joke of which a Jew is both the butt and the point, using tropes about stingy hooknosed Jews, what does that say? How about rape jokes? Do you really think that your female kin appreciate those?

What Israelis do is mir gonz sheiss egal - it is immaterial. Cultural relativism is a load of horsepucky - we do not pardon the Yemenites their ideas about child-brides, we do not absolve the Saudis their reprehensible attitudes towards Jews and Christians, and we do not say Bravo when a Turk, Pakistani, or Palestinian kills his sister. Yes, that's what they DO there. And yes, it is part of their way of life. It nevertheless remains absolutely barbaric, and those people are uncivilized.

Again, do you like Jew jokes that aren't laughing WITH you, but AT you?
And if you do, have you sought therapy?
Today, 9:49:36 AM


Guest 2
I love Jewish jokes and I don't mind them. Just like I enjoy telling Persian jokes when persians are not around, Morrocan jokes when Morrocan Jews are not around, Chinese Jokes when Chinese jokes are not around and black jokes when blacks are not allowed. We laugh, that is it. You make it more of an issue than it really is. I think people need to stop being hypersensitive about them. Every stereotype has some truth to it and its not a problem to laugh at them.

Rape jokes???? seriously? so its a black and white issue? a joke on Jewish stereotype now is the same as me saying its funny to see a girl get raped?
Today, 10:06:10 AM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
The crucial difference is whether the joke is laughing WITH the subject, or AT the subject.

Telling a joke which shows a sly appreciation of a positive quality is a priori far less offensive, and less likely to offend.
But a joke that makes fun of someone, especially if it uses a negative, unjust, or racist stereotype, is funny only in a bigoted sense, and only to a bigot. Even more so if it highlights how different 'those' people are - and by implication how superior the teller of the anecdote is.

The joke cited above is clearly one of the latter. The negative stereotype about the Chinese is that they can't drive, the negative stereotype about the Mexicans that they are irresponsible, carefree, and by implication too damn lazy and stupid to get insurance unless it's clear even to them that it has become desperately necessary to do so. The implication is that Chinese and Mexicans are not the same as nice normal white folks - they're horrible drivers, irresponsible, shiftless, and bad for the neighborhood.

And yes, rape jokes also exist.

QUOTE: "...and black jokes when blacks are not allowed"

Errrrrrm, what?!?!?! Are you hanging around the country club again?

-------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, there are as yet no jokes about shiftless 'entitled' white twenty-somethings urinating in residential doorways near nightclubs on Friday and Saturday nights. That, personally, is a group that I would love to have jokes about. Damned trustfund hippies! San Francisco just hasn't been the same since that bunch started moving out here.
Today, 12:32:34 PM


Guest 2
I meant when blacks are not around.

Hey, call me a bigot. You are around Israelis, we laugh at everyone and each ethnicities. You want to tell me that its bigoted to make fun of Persians being cheap in business when a Persian is not around? Stereotypes are there for a reason and we all just need to a laugh a bit. You are the one making a bigger issue of this and being hyper sensitive. Its time to be less thin-skinned.

The Chinese jokes in question is old. People tell it over and over again and I have heard if from Chinese. So your response would be, "well, its different when you are laughing WITH them" But that is ridiculous. Something totally offensive and crude and of bad taste is just that no matter if you laugh with them or at them.
Today, 2:06:06 PM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
"Something totally offensive and crude and of bad taste is just that no matter if you laugh with them or at them. " EXACTLY!
That is, in a very large part, precisely the point!

If the stereotype is positive, OR something the group in question themselves laugh at ('the Dutch are notorious tightwads, but clever and savvy merchants') then there is far far less chance that it will be (quite as) offensive.
If the stereotype is negative ('all Belgians are near-moronic, stupid beyond compare, dense and dullwitted'), it is by definition offensive, even if the group in question can laugh at the joke ('Belgians are a remarkably cheerful lot'), hideously offensive if they do not appreciate it. In such a case, even if there is an element of truth ('Belgians are a cheerful lot'), or even entirely true ('all Belgians are near-moronic, stupid beyond compare, dense and dullwitted'), it is beyond the pale.

People will often laugh in order not to be perceived as a buzzkill or sh*tdisturber, and self-depreciation is often a form of adapting to one's social environment. That doesn't mean that the joke isn't offensive.

If, like Mexicans and Chinese in the US, there is a history of discrimination and violence towards the 'not-like-us' group by the societal majority, any 'ethnic' jokes can be thinly iced. That joke about Chinese and Mexicans is absolutely sufficient reason for an ass-whupping.
Though perhaps not in Texas. Or Israel.

...

Jokes about the Dutch? Those are quite alright - after all, even though we're notorious tightwads, we're also clever and savvy merchants.

Jokes about Chinese accents (or driving habits) and Black people's hair? Well, do you really want to talk about YOUR honky attitude and the guilt you share for four five centuries of exploitative imperialism, lynchings, beatings, slavery, indentured servitude, the opium wars, and cherry blossom sex tourism? Do you? Do you really?

Okay, okay, okay - we 'get' that as a Jew you've also been on the other side, and that, personally, YOU had nothing to do with any of those things. And you were born in the seventies, long after the bad old days had ended. You, personally, are blameless. And we do like the modern world, everyone's 'equal' now. Cool.

How about the old joke about the difference between a Jew and a Pizza?
And yes, I can find a Chinese person married to a Mexican to tell it to you.

...

So these two Martians happen to bump into each other on a street in Manhattan.......
Today, 3:08:49 PM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
PLEASE NOTE: The comment above reflects social verities in California. We have no idea what the rest of the country is like on this issue, let alone the rest of the world. And frankly, we don't actually care.

Like slavery, Yemenite child marriages, Eastern European Gypsy abuse, or Sudanese ethnocide, it doesn't really matter that it is a treasured part of the local culture somewhere else, and quite the done thing - it still ain't civilized. So stop. Stop it. If you can't be like us, there's something wrong with you. Seriously.
Today, 3:14:51 PM


Bad Penguin! Bad Penguin!
Except if you're Belgian. Then we realize that life is hard enough for you already, and you need all the understanding that we are capable of. You poor thing, you just can't help yourself! There there.
Today, 3:16:39 PM

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AFTERWORD

No Belgians were harmed in the making of this post. We tried - lord knows we tried - but they're slippery little bastards, kind of like eels, and somehow, well, you know how it is.
In the end, they all got away.

Better luck next time.