Dealing with constant insults against Polish

Hello. My name is Benjamin Spychaj. I recently mentioned I am Polish to my friends and they constantly make jokes about my people. Every single day I have to hear about how Polish cavalry attacked German tanks with swords, how Polish have small penises, how "Polacks" are stupid and cannot do anything right. Does anyone have good ways to counter these kinds of jokes? Sometimes they really piss me off and I am tempted to go Polack and throw them out the window.

Benjamin Spychaj

Benjamin no need for you to get pissed off.
Just ignore those people.
Those are not your friends; they are your co-workers, colleagues, etc.
What is important is what people, who you care about and love, say to you or about you.
There rest is just hot air.

I live in an area where they put down "polacks" all the time. I tell them:
"do you know what "ski" stands for?" - "Smart, Knowledgable and Intelligent".
I tell them about Kopernicus from Torun, that if it wasn't for him, the sun would still be moving around the Earth. etc.
And I don't understand the reason why they do it, because most people in this community immigrated from Poland in the 1800's. And in other towns, where there are a lot of Scandinavian people, they say Scandinavian jokes. Or German.
But I have to admit, some are really funny.

if people see that you are affected by their jokes...embarrassed ,hurt annoyed, etc,then they will carry on doing it.its human nature and a josseling for power.we learn it as children.
my humble advice would be to take the wind out of their sails and laugh at the joke...in other words dont take it as a slight against you personally.....in the end it all comes down to a question of self-confidence and feeling good about yourself.all the best.peter

Benjamin,
Throwing them out the window will certainly stop the remarks, although might not impress the boss. If this bothers you to the point of stress in your life and if this is in USA; these remarks could be considered as creating a "Hostile Work Environment" and there are labor laws to protect you. I personally feel there are other ways to handle the problem; however I do know it is bothersome. I just don't like people to be picked on and harrassed whatever the reason is. I supervise over 100 people and have a very short fuse for this kind of behavior, we all can have fun at the workplace but not this way.
Good luck in the future
John

There are jokes about every country and culture. Even within own cultures... just different cities laugh at each other... the best is either ignore it... or come back with a joke about the person who "joke attacked" you

The Polish are becoming hated wherever they go...they are like the asians...too many of them enter other countries and the nationals of that country turn against them

OK, let's clarify something here. Polish cavalry NEVER, I repeat NEVER attacked German tanks with swords. This scuttlebutt was a part of Nazi propaganda, and it was made up in order to discredit Polish army in the eyes of his allies.

well I can tell you they are hated in the UK.

It is the governments fault for allowing too many of them to enter. The UK govenment originally predicted 13,500 to arrive in one year and instead 400,000 arrived!

So now the people have had enough and look at them as if they are scum.

Now that all the Poles left Poland, maybe you should go there now? You can certainly afford to pay your bills there....

I think that because of your descent you are already on top of their "People That We Truly Hate, and Wish Them To Die In a Sudden and Painful Way" list. I think that it could possibly be more worse for them, if you would be a lesbian and date a Muslim girl.

I like that!
I will start a list like that. But the only person on it will be my "X".

haha! awww well I couldn't be prouder to be who I am [Two amazing nations like Poland and India are united through me :P]... so they can hate all they like... hate brings only uglyness to their lives, not mine

Sorry to say it but theres a little community of polish growing at my work place, and the 3 poles that have landed in my part of the factory are all lazy, they constantly talk to each other, stop work and sit down and then when asked to actually do some work they have the cheek to say I'm lazy. This experience of working with the polish just makes me hope the government deports them all back to poland.

Well, you just happened to get 3 lazy poles. Could be 3 lazy Americans, Germans...whatever. All of the poles that work here are hard workers.

Looks like your hiring manager didn't do a good job of selecting workers. This isn't the fault of all Polish.

...and yes, you are a sorry individual.

I never gave much thought about polish jokes until I spent some time there. Even though I'm not polish hearing them kinda pisses me off now. All you have to do is go into a mcdonalds in the US for an example of stupidity and incompetence. Granted the only time I go is for breakfast once in a while. For some reason the young people working in them in poland actually knew what they were doing for the most part. We certainly don't have that here.

Ok and u've made that analysis on the basis of what? My short written piece on the useless polish twats at work. Well the way i see it ur lucky we've got a prick of a prime minister letting all of the polish in, maybe come re-election time conservative or bnp get the vote and u can all F off back to poland and earn £2 a week.

Yes. it only takes 1 comment like that to see that you're sorry. Nuff said. Yes, there are many Pl taking some of the less desireable jobs and I think it's great that they have the opportunity to learn better trades, earn more money as well as helping their country along by achieving these skills to bring back to Poland. Believe me, we have our share of immigrants that take our lower paying jobs, but we learn to live together here. it makes for a better atmosphere. There are only a few people that want to deport them all back mainly beacuse they're uneducated and have to compete for that same job.



Whats £2 a week?

what that is actually your pig

that will keep u fat for a while

But just think of the beautiful interracial children you guys would have. Your son would have a goat head and daughter a goat butt with 4 tits. Just think how much milk you can get out her?

bardzo zabawnay

It's you that is Bardzo Zabawny, plg!!!!
(and it should be "zabawny" not " zabawnay")

yes i know how to spell it

im better at writing not typing

its just you pronounce it zabavNAY

thats why i done that by mistake

bardzo zabawnay - shit i done it again

bardzo zabawny

thats better

Benjamin, remember that your last name SPYCHAJ means pushing in Polish.
Also remember that the Polish people are a very proud nationality, especially since Poland itself was wiped off the face of the earth for 132 years and the Polish people came back stronger than they were for decades.
If other people feel that they have to mock out the Polish person, only means that they are small minded. Many great discoveries came from Polish people. They are gifted and traditionalist. Believing that Poland will never die again.
Remember most of all that Polish people work harder than any other nationality as we take pride in what we do, as well as, pass onto others the wisdom, skills taught to us, and our traditions to others. Hold your head up high and remember moreso that you are better than those who don't look beyond the jokes.

The truth regarding the Polish Cavalry charging German tanks in WW2 is the Typicall the germans would strike with Panzers in the lead followed by infantry troops. The Polish Cavalry was charging to get behind the tanks and kill as many infantry troops as possible leaving the Panzers vulnerable without infantry support.
Anyone who continues to make Polish jokes is small minded - they are peple who can only speak one language! Most Polish people can speak two or more fluently - now whos is the dump one??
If it wasn;t for the Polish helping Washington during the revolutionary war - there may have not been a Untied States - read your history.

In Virginia,USA, there is a county called Pulaski. And in the Yorktown National park there are historic markers listing the Poles along with the French in different battles of the American revolution. So America wouldn't be here without the help of those stupid Polocks and the terrible French! But the rednecks here aren't educated enough to know that. So everyone who doens't watch NASCAR and whose family tree branches is stupid.
Does anyone have a link that talks about the Poles attacking the Nazi's with swords? I get that story all the time from my boyfriend who is Irish. I tell him it shows extreme bravery. If it was Nazi propoganda, I would love to rub his Irish face in it!

And what is an Irish 7 course meal? A six pack of beer and a boiled potato. What is a Canadian 7 course meal? A six pack and a doughnut. What is a redneck 7 course meal? There isn't one! Beer comes in a 6 pack not a seven pack.

Then this brings up an interesting idea. Did the Nazi's come up with the whole idea of the "Polish Joke"? Growing up as the only Pole in this redneck place, I got a lot of jokes. Hell, people here couldn't even say my name right. Why were we always assumed to be stupid? If this was a Nazi invention, would anyone who uses Polish jokes be spreading Nazi hogwash? That would be something to tell someone the next time they say "Hey, wanna hear a Polish joke?"

Americans first targeted Poles during their first wave of immigration, circa 1917. Like all immigrants, they had trouble understanding the language, customs and accoutrements of urban technology. Nativists who found immigrants threatening found it easy to brand them stupid.
Stand-up comics who grew up with ethnic humor made it a part of their routines. Poles seemed to get special attention from Jewish Borscht Belt comics, perhaps because of Poland’s long history of anti-Semitism.
In the 1960s, West Germans began a Polish joke cycle in response to tensions with then-Communist Poland. This was then imported into American comedy.
The civil rights movement made color-based ethnic humor increasingly unacceptable (though, obviously, it never vanished completely), and the rise of left-wing comedians made blue-collar conservatism the butt of many jokes. Working-class Polish-Americans made classic, and acceptable, targets of ethnic jokes.
But Polish-Americans were now too integrated for jokes about broken English and social slip-ups to make sense. So the jokes emphasized technological stupidity.
This struck a chord. In the midst of an arms race, a space race and the increase of techno gadgets in daily life, technology seemed either threatening or just hard to keep up with.
Jokes about people who didn’t understand technology or the logic behind it articulated that anxiety and relieved it by transferring it to another group.
Polish jokes exploded in popularity. By the 1980s, many kids repeating such jokes though “Polack” was another word for “moron” rather than someone from an actual country.
Recently, Polish jokes have become socially unacceptable, both because of anti-defamation groups (which recently got a Polish joke removed from “The Drew Carey Show” and because the Solidarity movement of the early ’80s showed Poles were smart and pro-democracy, to boot.
But the need to pick on a minority and saddle it with our fears about still-increasing technology remains. The same old jokes are still circulating, now applied to such “acceptable” targets as Iraqis and blondes.

bullshit

Benjamin Spychaj - show your friends this
Poland probably had one of the best cavalry in the world at
that time

The Battle of Krasnobród took place on 23 September 1939 near the town of Krasnobród. It was fought between the forces of the Polish Army and the German Wehrmacht during the Polish Defensive War of 1939. It was one of the last battles in European warfare in which cavalry was used on both sides.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Krasnobr%C3%B3d

I feel for this a little, growing up as a ‘ poor little Welsh boy’, I was mocked, and it hurts- but such behaviour is only usually displayed by stupid people and I don‘t care about stupid people‘s opinions- if I had Pound for every time I was asked ’which part of Ireland do you come from’ I’d have at least enough money to buy a house in Ireland.

I’m not very good at jokes, but the one I always replied with was ’Why do seagulls [or pigeons] fly upside down over [target country]? Answer: Because it’s not worth shitting on.

ogorek the myth about polish cavalry attacking German tanks during the WWII has already been dealt with in this topic. Check out the post #59. Still nice to see you contribute.

SW, you got me interested. What's with the "I hate Welsh people!" thing?

Matyjasz - sorry - didn't read that far - but good to hammer home because in UK schools they are still teaching that cavalry charged tanks.

Hi Benjamin,
you know I had to deal with the same kind of crap. and at the begining I had the same reaction with you. What to do to make them stop. Well, first Irealised that they were actually trying to get rid of their own frustration, because lets face it, no country is fairyland
Then I started reading more about their country, and I managed to give answers that made them shut up. You can talk about unemployment, strange behaviour, education, and so on. And trust me, you will find a lot of things to comment upon

I've had a quick skim of this topic... I'm English / Australian... I'm married to a Polish woman and my son has a Polish name.

Face it, most Polish people in the UK have a good education but are doing fairly menial work, competing with uneducated English slobs in the job market and living in some fairly dodgy communities. So, the lesson here is to concentrate on your english language skills, don't get put off by this prejudice and live your dream rather than someone else's rubbish beliefs.

Muppets that insult Polish people are probably not competitive in the labour market, nor are they competitive in dating nor anything else...

I advise businesses globally, and meet Polish professionals... i.e. people that did concentrate on their English... and succeeded. Polish people are generally less interested in talking and more interested in working then getting home to their families. Which, incidentally, is the way it should be.

It is funny to see a whole room of management from different countries - in general, the English & Americans want to discuss and discuss and discuss... the Spanish and Italians want to get emotional... the french don't want to talk at all and the Germans are not as efficient as they once were. The Polaks & Polkas are bored with all of this, they will want to get the work done as efficiently as possible. That's a good thing...

Polish people have an excellent reputation amongst educated English people, they are hard workers, very intelligent, well educated (the school education in Poland is clearly better than the equal in the UK - my son goes to school in Poland by choice) and incidentally - Polish people are also improving church attendance in the UK.

Check some history - there was a massive amount of immigration from Scotland to Poland in the 15 or 16th centuary... so if you're Polish and on English soil, you may just be back on your home turf... also, pretty much everyone was an immigrant at one stage if you look back far enough... certainly non-native Americans were... so their comments are really ridiculous.

Let's build a better country and world... where ever we are!

Rod

ABSO-BLOODY-LOUTELY RIGHT!!

you are a stupid Pole and the UK nationals have had enough of you...go back to Poland and you wont have to suffer anymore insults..stay here and you will!

go play with you british bulldogs and fetch us some sticks. that all you are good at

Some british do not like the poles now...it's possible you will be treated as second class citizens