Tangled Metal wrote:I'm English so as a member of the larger nation / region I should accept that I can only be the butt of such jokes never nation coming out on top? How is that acceptable?
If it's not right to denigrate minorities how is it right to denigrate majorities? They're both made up of people you're poking fun at. It might not be fun for them.
BTW if I went to the Isle of Bute in winter and someone told a joke about the English. I would be the minority. So does the location and ethnicity profile of an area affect a racist joke's acceptability?
I just need to know.
Personally I laugh at a joke of it's funny. If that joke pokes fun at a nationality, even my own, if it's a funny joke that's not playing on stereotypes in a clear and obviously offensive way then if it's funny I'll be amused. Although to be fair I've never found those sorts of jokes that funny. Perhaps better to consign them to the dustbin of comedy with the MiL jokes and jokes using the n word to describe black people.
Context is often everything; that includes who the teller is, who the audience is, the circumstances in which the joke is told etc. etc., and obviously people's sense of humour does vary and they find different things funny.
As an Englishman I am not offended by the Englishman being the butt of the joke above. It's different for a minority group that has repeatedly been the butt of similar jokes that rely on the same old oft repeated offensive stereotype, e.g. Scotsmen are mean. If you were the sole Englishman in a Scottish village and one or more of the villagers told anti-English jokes with you present, that would probably be offensive, and bullying if they did so multiple times.
For the most extreme example of context is everything, see this famous stand up routine of Chris Rock's. I doubt you will find it funny, for the same reasons that I don't, but note that his audience did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4