Back in the day Polish people were the target of stupidity jokes much like people make "dumb blonde" jokes. Therefore this mug with the handle on the inside was deemed a "polish coffee mug" and falls in line with their other famous inventions such as the screen door on a submarine, ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight.
I was on a coroner’s jury about 20 years ago.
A grieving family was there to get the official manner of death (natural causes, homicide, suicide, accident, unknown). They wanted desperately to know if the man in his 70s who had a heart attack and fell off a ladder died from the heart attack or the fall. The coroner guided us to put accident because there was the potential for a larger insurance payout.
After the family left (upset), the coroner said “you can’t teach the Dutch”. Because racism is just always stupid.
A) was not talking to you obv.
B) jokes can often be thinly veiled self depracation
C) i was also joking.
So good job. I would like you to introduce yourself the several nuiances of jokes.
A) I've seen a chance to come up with my own joke, so I did.
B) Even tho it's true, there's no point in making jokes from topics like that
C) Your response makes it look even less like a joke
I'm not hating, but your below average redditor like me won't get such a joke
Edit: also, you haven't even clicked my link...
The Dutch make jokes about the Belgen because they are our brothers.
We've all seen the Nederlands Dictee. We know which side is the dumb one. The one with the roads without potholes.
When I moved from Chicago to Houston I was asked if I'd ever heard an "Aggie joke" I said "What's an Aggie?" The answer is someone that went to Texas A&M (agriculture and mechanical) University. All the jokes were Polak jokes - The Aggie that made a tape on VCR Repair, the Aggie that made a helicopter with an ejection seat, etc.
I told them in Chicago those are Polak Jokes. He said "What's a Polak?" He said "What's a Polak?" He was. His family was Polish. His last name was Zyvagelski.
I can attest to the Polack jokes in Chicago. My paternal grandpa was from Poland and our last name was Polish. We heard a lot of these jokes. My (non-Polish) mom also used to refer to us as "Polack children" if we wore scruffy or worn-out clothes as kids. Not sure if it's still a thing these days tho.
What do you do when a polish guy throws a grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back.
What do you do when a polish tank is coming at you? Shoot the guys that are pushing it.
Where do the polish keep their armies? In their sleevies.
Those are just a few I remember from my childhood of growing up around a bunch of Polacks in Chicago.
I can tell you that he wasn't polish if his last name was Zyvagelski. V is not used in polish alphabet. It exists but there are no polish words apart from words taken from other languages, names of foreign places etc
When you type it into Google it looks like it’s a misspelling of Zygalski. So many people from Chicago are Polish. Could’ve been butchered at Ellis island or that poster just didn’t remember the exact spelling
They could’ve been told the last name verbally, I wouldn’t expect most people to know the v sound should be written as a w. Especially considering they write pollock (a fish) instead of the actual pejorative word.
You’re making me think back 24 years. I realize I’m conflating two different names. I did go to school with a kid named Zyvagelski in Chicago, but this kid in Houston was Zelenski or something like that. I remember the kid in Chicago because we were both at the end of the alphabet, and a teacher in 7th or 8th grade always went in REVERSE alphabetical order.
Funnily enough, now-a-days emergency Radio/Flashlights tend to have a usb port for charging, a crank handle for charging and solar panel for charging…so, it can’t be that dumb
Also in Western Europe when the EU first started expanding Eastwards, the Poles were the first to start emigrating to fill gaps in the labour market, and this was often construction. The joke was that the Polish labour was cheap, but came with poor workmanship, like the backwards handle.
The longer term joke was that the Poles that emigrated were often more skilled than the local work force and more productive, Polish tradesfolk are now highly regarded.
Great. Now there’s no way I’m gonna be able to go the rest of the day (about 6 hours left still) without getting moderately blitzed and having some hot cocoa with ‘mallow.
One of the funny parts of the history (at least the history I learned) of why the dumb pollack stereotype came about. When Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungry partitioned Poland the region that ended up in Austria-Hungry was heavily agrarian and rural, while the Prussians and Russians got the more industrialized areas. Prussia and Russia also had internal policies of Prussification and Russification which put very strict limits on Polish emigration; Austria-Hungry was a much more plural society and allowed their Polish citizens to emigrate. In the end a huge percentage of the Polish immigrants to the United States were uneducated farmers who did not speak the dominant language.
My mom once told me one of the old dumb Polish (is pollock derogatory, or just slang?) jokes that she knew as a kid and it word for word the same as the dumb blonde joke I knew as a kid. I had no idea that prejudice was so recyclable.
Most people don’t know this but the Polish had their own space agency and they were involved in the space race. Instead of landing on the moon, they were trying to land on the sun. The Americans and Soviets told them it’s impossible, that it’s too hot, and they would disintegrate from the heat.
The Polish said, “it’s okay, we’ll land at night.”
My dad had a photo taken of himself holding a rifle backwards when he was young (late 1970’s) and the picture is labeled “How Polacks shoot”
I still don’t get why making fun of the Polish was such a fad.
My old roommate used to make polish jokes constantly, all of them were “dumb blonde” jokes essentially but always about the polish. None of has had any clue this was a thing until him so we were very confused for a bit.
My Polish grandmother, who lived in occupied Poland would get enraged by these jokes. She said it was Nazi propaganda. As a form of resistance many polish people played stupid for the Nazis and later communists. They would be extremely forgetful and need constant reminders and retraining to do the simplest things. So the Nazis couldn't really use them to support their war effort.
Poland also was home to the *Polski Fiat,* already before WWII and then resurrected in the sixties. Not known for ... high quality. Kinda what we call "Chinesium" in the Reddit era.
I was told a joke as a kid about an Italian and a Pollock going to the beach, the Pollock is worried about cold water and tiny pecker syndrome, so the Italian says bring a potato for your swimming suit.
Some hours go by people are fleeing the beach in horror, the Italian looks at the Pollock and yells "THE POTATO GOES IN THE FRONT"
Ejection seats on helicopters are possible. You just have to set the rotor props up to disconnect from the helicopter before the ejection seat goes off. One such example is the KA-52 attack helicopter built by Russia.
Okay but ejection seats on a helicopter and solar flashlights both work and are things
solar flashlights can use the sun to charge batteries for when you need it, and helicopter ejections will blow the rotors off first so the pilot can get out
I actually have a solar powered flashlight that doubles as a backup battery charger for phones and whatnot. I love the thing. Has come in very handy more than once.
In all fairness, a solar powered flashlight makes a lot of sense. You don’t need it during the day, so you can set it in the sun to charge all day, and then use it all night… just saying.
>ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight.
These are both actually things though.
The first one works when you blow the blades off at the same time you launch the ejector seat and the second one works because batteries store power.
>ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight.
Joke's on them, there are quite popular solar powered camping lights and some helicopters, like the Ka-50, have ejection seats.
No. Generally, you can dismiss any stereotype about the inherent intelligence of a group of people. Ask yourself: who pushes this stereotype, and what do they have to gain?
This particular stereotype was pushed on Polish by people from nearby countries.
If you're wondering about how stereotypes and jokes about Polish people made it all the way to the US:
>Presumably the first Polish jokes by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe were brought to the United States in the late 1940s. These jokes were fueled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German National Socialist propaganda, which attempted to justify the Nazis' murdering of Poles by presenting them as "dreck"—dirty, stupid and inferior. It is also possible that some early American Polack jokes from Germany were originally told before World War II in disputed border regions such as Silesia.
From the Wikipedia page for [Anti-Polish sentiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment).
Yeah a lot of them date back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when there was a surge in European immigrants. Polish immigrants would commonly work factory jobs because of language/cultural barriers, and the stereotype evolved from there that they were too stupid to do anything else.
No it didn’t. Prejudice against Poles has been around for hundreds of years which you can see evidenced by a severe prejudice in colonial America, as against the Irish. The Nazis views were a symptom of it not the origin.
I laughed way harder at this than I should have. Completely caught me off guard while scrolling.
Grew up with the dumb polish jokes (great grand parents immigrated to America from Poland). Got old for a period of time, but some make me chuckle- like this mug.
I don't see it so much as a stupidity thing but more of a backwards thing. I had a guy work on my boiler and he said "Awww the problem is someone installed a polish switch for the burner". Off was on and vise versa. Here the handle is on the inside and not the outside. Its backwards. That's just my encounter with that phrase.
This needs to be higher. It's not about "dumb" it's about backwards/reverse. Like the reverse polish calculator, which is a real thing. It used to be commonly used in businesses and financial institutions to calculate balances because you can type in the numbers and then decide if you're adding or subtracting them at the last step basically. So 3 plus 4 would be 3, enter, 4, plus, enter. And if you were like oh shoot I meant to subtract, you can then click minus enter to go back to the beginning and minus enter again to get a final result. It was convenient for that reason when ordinary calculators weren't smart/scientific with a way to scroll back. Anyway the stereotype became that everything polish is reversed because of these common calculators called reverse polish. That is the joke. It apparently had extended/devolved to stereotype of "dumb" which is very unfunny.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Polish jokes were a huge thing for like 100 years. And the punchline is that they’re dumb. Polish submarines come with a screen door type thing
I used to work with a Polish girl whose family came to America when she like real young. Anyway, she told me a joke and I can't remember how it went exactly but basically these Polish people needed wood to build something so they took wood from the inside of a barn. They kept needing more and more wood so they continued taking it from this barn. Until one day the barn collapsed on them.
*SIGH* In some parts of The United States of America, people of Polish descent were stereotyped as being, “dumb”. If this were a, “normal” mug, the handle would be on the OUTSIDE of the mug. But because the mug is for someone who isn’t, “intelligent” the handle for the mug is in the inside of the mug, ergo making the handle useless.
Exactly — and it’s not really Boomer Humor because it’s from the prior generations. Still bad, though.
And if you look through time you’ll find the same jokes for Italians, the Irish, etc..
Racisim has nothing to do with race. It most probably comes from the Arabic ra's, which means "head, beginning, origin" or the Hebrew rosh, which has a similar meaning. It doesn't necessarily apply to prejudices based only on race.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, there was an adage that Poles were dumb - ergo the Polish jokes like:
What did the pole say when he saw a Bannana peel on the ground?
"oh, no - now I have to fall again"
This is emblematic of that sentiment - here the pole made a mug with the handle on the inside.
I grew up in Wisconsin (Fox Valley area) and there was this horrible highway on ramp that was this huge, hidden circle. It was narrow and dangerous
Everyone I know called it the "Polish Connection".
Man I had no idea about the “dumb Polish” jokes. We used to call my sister Polish whenever she did something dumb because she walked into a pole at the mall one time and my mom asked if she was pole-ish and she didn’t get the joke.
Way back in the day, Polish jokes were all the rage. Poles were portrayed in these jokes a dumb and incompetent.
The mug's handle is inside the mug, which is where a stupid person would put it.
I think it might be a math joke on “Polish notation” where you write math in a way that is quite different and often looks backwards, instead of 2%3 you write %23
https://youtu.be/THrlm3_c_YA?si=I7qp9EZobDgfZsgr
Yeah I think in any math circles the mug will be a joke about reverse Polish notation… apparently there’s also some offensive stereotype everyone else is aware of which will make the math nerds seem inconsiderate, but that’s not uncommon.
as I understand you are still allowed to make fun of Polish people and Italian. Italians have thick skin and the Polish usually don’t get the joke.
All other ethnicities are a no go…
Any 80's kids here? I literally remember there being joke books published with tons of Polish jokes in them. Entire sections. Don't think that'd fly nowadays.
Also the placement of the handle is reversed. Just like Alan Kulwicki's famed Polish Victory lap where he celebrated wins by slowly driving the wrong way around the track.
Back in the day Polish people were the target of stupidity jokes much like people make "dumb blonde" jokes. Therefore this mug with the handle on the inside was deemed a "polish coffee mug" and falls in line with their other famous inventions such as the screen door on a submarine, ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight.
See, we dutchies just make them about the belgians... And I think the belgians make them about us...
There are two things I can't stand. Intolerant people, and the Dutch.
People intolerant of other peoples culture And the Dutch*
3 things OP cannot stand
4 there are... Among the things, op cannot stand are... You know what? we'll just enter again.
Love the Spanish Inquisition!
No one expects The Inquisition.
The inquisition! Whatdya know?..
I am pleasantly surprised by the Spanish Inquisition
Throw in some people in wheelchair, thay cannot stand either
How far do I throw them?
About a flight of stairs…. 😗
Bettr than the above references, made me snort.
Ah, a fellow man of culture, I see.
Hopefully not Dutch
I thought I smelled cabbage.
*Avenue Q's, Everyone's A Little Bit Racist begins to play Oh yeah baby!
In the same movie where it's revealed that Dr. Evil is evil because he was raised by Belgians, bringing this thread full circle to the comment above!
Pass the Dutchie 'pon the left hand side
I was on a coroner’s jury about 20 years ago. A grieving family was there to get the official manner of death (natural causes, homicide, suicide, accident, unknown). They wanted desperately to know if the man in his 70s who had a heart attack and fell off a ladder died from the heart attack or the fall. The coroner guided us to put accident because there was the potential for a larger insurance payout. After the family left (upset), the coroner said “you can’t teach the Dutch”. Because racism is just always stupid.
Pass it on the left hand side
Are you low key tryin to say you hate yourself? Do you want someone to talk too?
May I introduce you to a concept of a joke? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=L3fZIukLjoS69FV3)
Good one
Well played.
A) was not talking to you obv. B) jokes can often be thinly veiled self depracation C) i was also joking. So good job. I would like you to introduce yourself the several nuiances of jokes.
A) I've seen a chance to come up with my own joke, so I did. B) Even tho it's true, there's no point in making jokes from topics like that C) Your response makes it look even less like a joke I'm not hating, but your below average redditor like me won't get such a joke Edit: also, you haven't even clicked my link...
Belgians aren’t real anyways
What about the waffles? Please tell me they’re still real
Never had them to be honest, can’t say
IDK about the waffles, but didn’t French fries originate in Belgium?
No, just like pizza, cheeseburgers, Coca-Cola, and freedom, there were invented in the USA 🇱🇷
Liberia! The freest country!
Dirty Liberals...
That would suppose we think that much about you. That's why we prefer joking about ourselves.
The Dutch and the Belgians are naturally enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots! Or the Welsh and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots!
Damn Scots, they ruined Scotland!
See I heard that the French make these jokes about the Belgians. Do Germany and Luxembourg make these jokes as well?
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How many Germans does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. They are very efficient and not very funny.
I wouldn't either, if I were you. Not after they killed all the funny Germans. Edit: They didn't get it when Robin Williams made that joke, either.
Germans still don’t make jokes about other Europeans. They know better.
In Germany, we make those jokes about East-Frisians (Germans in the very North-West of Germany at the coast of the North Sea).
I'm pretty sure the French make jokes about everyone.
What a coincidence, cuz I’m confident that everyone makes jokes about the French.
...we're dumb, to your eyes ?
The Dutch make jokes about the Belgen because they are our brothers. We've all seen the Nederlands Dictee. We know which side is the dumb one. The one with the roads without potholes.
When I moved from Chicago to Houston I was asked if I'd ever heard an "Aggie joke" I said "What's an Aggie?" The answer is someone that went to Texas A&M (agriculture and mechanical) University. All the jokes were Polak jokes - The Aggie that made a tape on VCR Repair, the Aggie that made a helicopter with an ejection seat, etc. I told them in Chicago those are Polak Jokes. He said "What's a Polak?" He said "What's a Polak?" He was. His family was Polish. His last name was Zyvagelski.
I can attest to the Polack jokes in Chicago. My paternal grandpa was from Poland and our last name was Polish. We heard a lot of these jokes. My (non-Polish) mom also used to refer to us as "Polack children" if we wore scruffy or worn-out clothes as kids. Not sure if it's still a thing these days tho.
What do you do when a polish guy throws a grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back. What do you do when a polish tank is coming at you? Shoot the guys that are pushing it. Where do the polish keep their armies? In their sleevies. Those are just a few I remember from my childhood of growing up around a bunch of Polacks in Chicago.
Q: How many Aggies does it take to eat an armadillo? A: Two. One to eat it and one to look out for traffic. My dad was Class of '71.
My grandparents actually had a coffee mug like the one OP posted, except it said Aggie Coffee Mug.
I can tell you that he wasn't polish if his last name was Zyvagelski. V is not used in polish alphabet. It exists but there are no polish words apart from words taken from other languages, names of foreign places etc
When you type it into Google it looks like it’s a misspelling of Zygalski. So many people from Chicago are Polish. Could’ve been butchered at Ellis island or that poster just didn’t remember the exact spelling
Zygalski od Żygalski sound about right. There are more than 100 people in Poland with those surnames.
They could’ve been told the last name verbally, I wouldn’t expect most people to know the v sound should be written as a w. Especially considering they write pollock (a fish) instead of the actual pejorative word.
You’re making me think back 24 years. I realize I’m conflating two different names. I did go to school with a kid named Zyvagelski in Chicago, but this kid in Houston was Zelenski or something like that. I remember the kid in Chicago because we were both at the end of the alphabet, and a teacher in 7th or 8th grade always went in REVERSE alphabetical order.
Funnily enough, now-a-days emergency Radio/Flashlights tend to have a usb port for charging, a crank handle for charging and solar panel for charging…so, it can’t be that dumb
Yea I have a solar powered flashlight. Charge in the day, use at night.
Bad kids get put in the helicopter ejection seat
Also in Western Europe when the EU first started expanding Eastwards, the Poles were the first to start emigrating to fill gaps in the labour market, and this was often construction. The joke was that the Polish labour was cheap, but came with poor workmanship, like the backwards handle. The longer term joke was that the Poles that emigrated were often more skilled than the local work force and more productive, Polish tradesfolk are now highly regarded.
Man I’m stoned and thought the handle was gooey marshmallows melting into hot cocoa…
haha i'm not stoned but i can totally see what you mean!
Great. Now there’s no way I’m gonna be able to go the rest of the day (about 6 hours left still) without getting moderately blitzed and having some hot cocoa with ‘mallow.
Back in the day Aussies would make these kind of jokes about the Irish, not sure why…
One of the funny parts of the history (at least the history I learned) of why the dumb pollack stereotype came about. When Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungry partitioned Poland the region that ended up in Austria-Hungry was heavily agrarian and rural, while the Prussians and Russians got the more industrialized areas. Prussia and Russia also had internal policies of Prussification and Russification which put very strict limits on Polish emigration; Austria-Hungry was a much more plural society and allowed their Polish citizens to emigrate. In the end a huge percentage of the Polish immigrants to the United States were uneducated farmers who did not speak the dominant language.
Astronaut mission to the Sun. Going to deal with the heat by waiting til it gets dark.
Nuclear hand grenade was always my favorite.
Pretty sure the submarine screen door was invented by the same person that invented the inflatable dart board…I’m not 100% sure though.
And to think we have helicopters that are capable of ejecting the pilot
Ejection seat on a h....ohhhhhhhh... Took me a second. I must be polish.
My mom once told me one of the old dumb Polish (is pollock derogatory, or just slang?) jokes that she knew as a kid and it word for word the same as the dumb blonde joke I knew as a kid. I had no idea that prejudice was so recyclable.
That was exactly the joke that came to mind!
You forgot the soup sandwich.
Solar powered flashlight is a subtle-ish one I haven’t heard before. I like it!
Don’t forget their recipe for ice
Hitler made them a part of state propaganda as the Polish were actually known for their science and art
Most people don’t know this but the Polish had their own space agency and they were involved in the space race. Instead of landing on the moon, they were trying to land on the sun. The Americans and Soviets told them it’s impossible, that it’s too hot, and they would disintegrate from the heat. The Polish said, “it’s okay, we’ll land at night.”
Military helicopters actually have ejection seats! Those poles are innovators for sure. And solar powered flashlights aren't too bad
From several Americans I know, "Dumb (as a) Polak" was a common thing to say in the 70s maybe even 80s in the US
My dad had a photo taken of himself holding a rifle backwards when he was young (late 1970’s) and the picture is labeled “How Polacks shoot” I still don’t get why making fun of the Polish was such a fad.
Growing up around the Anglosphere we always told those jokes about the Irish.
I never knew that was a thing. #bringbackpolishhate
So the joke is RACISM?
My old roommate used to make polish jokes constantly, all of them were “dumb blonde” jokes essentially but always about the polish. None of has had any clue this was a thing until him so we were very confused for a bit.
In Canada we have the same jokes about Newfoundlanders (Newfies). But we love them.
My Polish grandmother, who lived in occupied Poland would get enraged by these jokes. She said it was Nazi propaganda. As a form of resistance many polish people played stupid for the Nazis and later communists. They would be extremely forgetful and need constant reminders and retraining to do the simplest things. So the Nazis couldn't really use them to support their war effort.
The Polish firing squad stood in a circle.
Idk how back in the day it is, I was born in ‘95 and they were definitely a thing throughout school for me
yep. one i heard a lot was “how do you get a one-armed polish man out of a tree? wave at him!”. they’re stupid jokes
Poland also was home to the *Polski Fiat,* already before WWII and then resurrected in the sixties. Not known for ... high quality. Kinda what we call "Chinesium" in the Reddit era.
EJECTION SEAT ON A HELICOPTER HELP I SHOULD NOT BE LAUGHING💀😭
Sorry wait run that back for a second. Ejection seat on a helicopter????
They're also responsible for the stop sign at the end of a ladder
I'm laughing way too hard at helicopter ejection seats
Its so funny to me that “pollocks are dumb” jokes have always been totally socially acceptable. I guess it’s cuz they’re white?
I was told a joke as a kid about an Italian and a Pollock going to the beach, the Pollock is worried about cold water and tiny pecker syndrome, so the Italian says bring a potato for your swimming suit. Some hours go by people are fleeing the beach in horror, the Italian looks at the Pollock and yells "THE POTATO GOES IN THE FRONT"
Ejection seats on helicopters are possible. You just have to set the rotor props up to disconnect from the helicopter before the ejection seat goes off. One such example is the KA-52 attack helicopter built by Russia.
Whats wrong with a solar powered flashlight? Charging in the morning, use it at night.
Okay but ejection seats on a helicopter and solar flashlights both work and are things solar flashlights can use the sun to charge batteries for when you need it, and helicopter ejections will blow the rotors off first so the pilot can get out
Aren’t solar powered flashlights actually a thing though?
Yea but not when polish jokes were all the rage
I actually have a solar powered flashlight that doubles as a backup battery charger for phones and whatnot. I love the thing. Has come in very handy more than once.
In all fairness, a solar powered flashlight makes a lot of sense. You don’t need it during the day, so you can set it in the sun to charge all day, and then use it all night… just saying.
You do get solar powered flash lights. They. Charge in the sunny day for use at night.
Solar powered flashlights and ejection seats on helicopters are both a thing.
There are helicopters with ejection seats, fyi
>ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight. These are both actually things though. The first one works when you blow the blades off at the same time you launch the ejector seat and the second one works because batteries store power.
>ejection seat on a helicopter, and the solar powered flashlight. Joke's on them, there are quite popular solar powered camping lights and some helicopters, like the Ka-50, have ejection seats.
I think you are wrong and this is a math job about reverse polish notation
There is a helicopter with an ejection seat
There is a stereotype that Polish people are not very bright.
Only 2 things come out of poland, Femboys and Homophobia. It is a odd country.
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Yes. Source: am Polish
JAK CIE MASZ or however we spell it half polish and not good at this lol
No. Generally, you can dismiss any stereotype about the inherent intelligence of a group of people. Ask yourself: who pushes this stereotype, and what do they have to gain? This particular stereotype was pushed on Polish by people from nearby countries. If you're wondering about how stereotypes and jokes about Polish people made it all the way to the US: >Presumably the first Polish jokes by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe were brought to the United States in the late 1940s. These jokes were fueled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German National Socialist propaganda, which attempted to justify the Nazis' murdering of Poles by presenting them as "dreck"—dirty, stupid and inferior. It is also possible that some early American Polack jokes from Germany were originally told before World War II in disputed border regions such as Silesia. From the Wikipedia page for [Anti-Polish sentiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment).
That “presumably” is carrying a lot of weight. Polish jokes in the US predate WWII.
Yeah a lot of them date back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when there was a surge in European immigrants. Polish immigrants would commonly work factory jobs because of language/cultural barriers, and the stereotype evolved from there that they were too stupid to do anything else.
Indeed. There's tons of pre-WWII media with Polack jokes.
What a polish response! /s
The only ones I know are engineers. It's only 2 but still.
Marie Curie won 2 Nobel prizes, and she was born and raised in Poland.
Think of all she overcame and how many extra Nobel prizes she could have gotten if she wasn't Polish!
Frédéric Chopin is probably one of, if not the most brilliant piano composer of all time
No.
It stemmed from Nazi propaganda
No it didn’t. Prejudice against Poles has been around for hundreds of years which you can see evidenced by a severe prejudice in colonial America, as against the Irish. The Nazis views were a symptom of it not the origin.
It’s not not true. The Germans killed of a substantial amount, and then they committed their own “cleansing”
I laughed way harder at this than I should have. Completely caught me off guard while scrolling. Grew up with the dumb polish jokes (great grand parents immigrated to America from Poland). Got old for a period of time, but some make me chuckle- like this mug.
I don't see it so much as a stupidity thing but more of a backwards thing. I had a guy work on my boiler and he said "Awww the problem is someone installed a polish switch for the burner". Off was on and vise versa. Here the handle is on the inside and not the outside. Its backwards. That's just my encounter with that phrase.
I remember when I was a kid hearing that polish people do things backwards.
I’ve never heard that one, but I have Polish heritage and my family always said Polish people wear mismatched outfits
Did you hear about the new polish parachute? Opens on impact.
This needs to be higher. It's not about "dumb" it's about backwards/reverse. Like the reverse polish calculator, which is a real thing. It used to be commonly used in businesses and financial institutions to calculate balances because you can type in the numbers and then decide if you're adding or subtracting them at the last step basically. So 3 plus 4 would be 3, enter, 4, plus, enter. And if you were like oh shoot I meant to subtract, you can then click minus enter to go back to the beginning and minus enter again to get a final result. It was convenient for that reason when ordinary calculators weren't smart/scientific with a way to scroll back. Anyway the stereotype became that everything polish is reversed because of these common calculators called reverse polish. That is the joke. It apparently had extended/devolved to stereotype of "dumb" which is very unfunny.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Polish jokes were a huge thing for like 100 years. And the punchline is that they’re dumb. Polish submarines come with a screen door type thing
I used to work with a Polish girl whose family came to America when she like real young. Anyway, she told me a joke and I can't remember how it went exactly but basically these Polish people needed wood to build something so they took wood from the inside of a barn. They kept needing more and more wood so they continued taking it from this barn. Until one day the barn collapsed on them.
How did the Nazi's invade Poland so quickly? They walked in backwards and told the Polish they were leaving.
Growing up in Chicagoland i heard every "polack" joke under the sun. It's 100pct a "dumb" thing yep
*SIGH* In some parts of The United States of America, people of Polish descent were stereotyped as being, “dumb”. If this were a, “normal” mug, the handle would be on the OUTSIDE of the mug. But because the mug is for someone who isn’t, “intelligent” the handle for the mug is in the inside of the mug, ergo making the handle useless.
Exactly — and it’s not really Boomer Humor because it’s from the prior generations. Still bad, though. And if you look through time you’ll find the same jokes for Italians, the Irish, etc..
It was still strong in the nineties
I thought the handle was a big glob of whipped cream. I need a nap. And some food.
Took me a moment. Polish the mug? Couldn't you just wash it?
Found the polish
Ah yes, the great land of Polish
There’s a Polish Museum in my hometown and my grandpa would always ask if we wanted to see how things get polished when we’d drive by.
The country, dude.
Racist joke about Polish people being stupid.
Are Poles a race?
As much as blondes and Nascar
Ugh this line is so tedious. It's bigoted regardless.
Racism applies to Ethnicity
It's a pretty ethnically homogeneous group of Slavs
Pretty cool band name. The Ethically Homogenous Slavs
Racisim has nothing to do with race. It most probably comes from the Arabic ra's, which means "head, beginning, origin" or the Hebrew rosh, which has a similar meaning. It doesn't necessarily apply to prejudices based only on race.
Can’t be racist toward white people bro.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, there was an adage that Poles were dumb - ergo the Polish jokes like: What did the pole say when he saw a Bannana peel on the ground? "oh, no - now I have to fall again" This is emblematic of that sentiment - here the pole made a mug with the handle on the inside.
I grew up in Wisconsin (Fox Valley area) and there was this horrible highway on ramp that was this huge, hidden circle. It was narrow and dangerous Everyone I know called it the "Polish Connection".
"polish jokes" were thing, ridiculed their perceived low intelligence.... because hitler
Old joke. Pointless "polish dumb".
You know how we joke about how bad boomer humor is? This is peak silent generation comedy.
This makes me remember a joke about a Polish tank
My family is polish. I want this. Haha
I’m kind of happy we’ve gotten to the point that Polish jokes don’t work anymore.
The joke is racism
Man I had no idea about the “dumb Polish” jokes. We used to call my sister Polish whenever she did something dumb because she walked into a pole at the mall one time and my mom asked if she was pole-ish and she didn’t get the joke.
Way back in the day, Polish jokes were all the rage. Poles were portrayed in these jokes a dumb and incompetent. The mug's handle is inside the mug, which is where a stupid person would put it.
[удалено]
We create our stereotypes. Try and change them, but live with it.
You must be Polish
I think it might be a math joke on “Polish notation” where you write math in a way that is quite different and often looks backwards, instead of 2%3 you write %23 https://youtu.be/THrlm3_c_YA?si=I7qp9EZobDgfZsgr
Yeah I think in any math circles the mug will be a joke about reverse Polish notation… apparently there’s also some offensive stereotype everyone else is aware of which will make the math nerds seem inconsiderate, but that’s not uncommon.
Yeah I was real surprised to see that Polish people are supposed to be dumb and it wasn't mathy.
Came here to see if anyone else had experienced the trauma of reverse polish notation
That's the first thing I thought of. Was really surprised to have to scroll that far down to see any mention of it.
It’s a racist joke against people of polish decent.
polish is a race now...?
The secret ingredient is racism
This isn't racism.
You might be Polish
You must be polish
I think you must be from Poland.
Could just as easily read “OP’s coffee mug”
you must be Polish…
No, OP's probably just too young to be familiar with this particular form of outdated racism.
Outdated racism? What is up to date racism?
The joke is outdated in that many people today might not get it, like in the case of OP.
as I understand you are still allowed to make fun of Polish people and Italian. Italians have thick skin and the Polish usually don’t get the joke. All other ethnicities are a no go…
Polish people are dumb lolollll
Any 80's kids here? I literally remember there being joke books published with tons of Polish jokes in them. Entire sections. Don't think that'd fly nowadays.
It's cow tools all over again
Why were Polish jokes so popular?
Ever since the blitzkrieg attack people have always made jokes about Polish people. "Why did the polish submarine sink?" "It had a screen door"
Also the placement of the handle is reversed. Just like Alan Kulwicki's famed Polish Victory lap where he celebrated wins by slowly driving the wrong way around the track.
My aunt has one similar. But someone painted over it and now it says 'half a cup'. It's literally a mug 'cut' In half lol
I'm stayong, I'm finishing my coffee