Granddad telling kids Irish jokes

[SulisMum]

DS (aged 9) told me an Irish joke last night which he had got from his granddad. I gave him a little talk about how it wasn't nice to make jokes about different nationalities and suggested he didn't repeat it - but only after I'd laughed about it with him. (I actually laughed involuntarily as it was a reasonably funny joke).

DS's response was that his granddad had also told him a joke in which the Englishman was made to look silly.

Questions for the MN jury?

How would you deal with your DC telling jokes based on national stereotypes?
Should I tell my dad not to furnish DS with more similar Englishman/Scotsman/Irishman jokes?
Should I be flamed for laughing?

I couldn't care less as long as he's not taught to say something that would be considered racist. Being Irish I don't consider a joke making either an Irish or an English man to look silly would fall into that category. Its just helping them develop their sense of humour, no need to take it too seriously. Some jokes they'll retell will be funny, some won't.

Most humour is at someone's expense, tbh.

IME these particular jokes are usually fairly inane and usually subscribing to fairly inoffensive stereotypes. They don't offend me like some of the awful black person always being a rapist/thief offend me.

i don't think anybody should ever be told what they can and can't find funny.

They're jokes - ie they're made up, ie they're not real.

I agree with Nancy, actually. I laugh at most jokes, regardless of the content, if they are funny rather than being crass and an excuse to be racist/sexist/whatever dressed up as a joke.

I don't think you need to tell your dad to stop. Your DC knows that you shouldn't say things that will hurt someone elses feelings and children seem to be quite sensitive to others (unless my DD is exceptional).
My DD censored my dad last year, he was cacking on about the BNP and other parties and how the Albanians/Kosovans/Polish/whoever should stop stealing the jobs of the decent ordinary english man. DD told him he sounded ridiculous and asked if they'd stolen his job. He is retired and she was eight.

I tend to laugh (providing they're funny and not completely insulting iykwim!) and don't get too het up about it - but being Scottish means our skin has to be quite tough to cope with the myriad of jokes lobbed in our direction

I'm sure someone will come along soon to say that they are childish, lacking in imagination and racist though.

My grandpa is full of these. The only ones I roll my eyes at and give him a 'look' are his racist ones, which admittedly are low in number and very mild! He was a prison officer and greatly respected and liked by his inmates (of all races), and I know he doesn't have any malice, he's just from the era where these jokes were freely told.
He tends to save the silly nonsense jokes for the DDs though because they don't know the Scots are meant to be tight, the Irish stupid etc, so it'd be a joke wasted...

It's definitely a generational thing. DF is not averse to the odd sexist joke or comment. I've known him to make (what he would consider to be mildly) racist jokes in the past, but I think he's stopped that now.

kreecher - your DD sounds like a star!

I think there always will be a fall guy for a joke, and as long as you deal it out in a fairly even-handed way then it's not a big deal. And it's a generational thing, isn't it? People in their twenties would be less likely to make jokes like that.

When I was a kid (in Ireland), while the UK were busy telling Paddy jokes, we were telling jokes about Kerry Men. I always wondered who people from Kerry told jokes about.

Agree that all humour is at someones expense. Was it funny? That is my criteria for joke telling.

Think we are in danger of losing our humour because we overthink everything and see offense/malice where none is intended, so I would urge you to relax.

Some stand up makes me cringe though, because some comedienes are very clever, but misjudge the fine line between clever and funny.

I'm surprised that Irish people think it's fine to tell jokes about Irish people being thick etc. I don't mind a Paddy Scotsman, Paddy Englishman and Paddy Irishman joke (where nearly everyone comes a cropper and the humour is quite gentle) but in general, I'm not a fan if they are told by people who are not Irish.

My grandfather was always very bitter at the treatment he had in the UK as a labourer fifty years ago with signs in windowshops saying "no Irish need apply". I've had older clients ask me if I am qualified to treat them as I am Irish.

I would be offended by jokes implying a terrorist connection, too. When I was pregnant, a man in the tourist office in Blackpool had a pop at me for the fact there was no left luggage in the area because of "what your lot did". I didn't find it funny, and I don't think he said it to be funny either..

I'm not precious about it, I would never really talk to anyone in real life about it.. but it doesn't sit well with me, no more than it would if it was a joke about a "Paki shopkeeper" or a dumb bimbo blonde.
I don't find it funny, I just find it crass and a bit pathetic.

These jokes represent the contempt the English had for the Irish. That is the history behind them. What a shame so many people still think it's ok to tell them.

So should we tell jokes about "Paki's" and "n-s" then? Or is it just okay for English people to tell jokes about Irish people because, well, let's face it, we are drunken thickos who love to bomb people?

I don't think you can compare "culchie" jokes with Irish jokes. Parochial jokes about people in the next village are different than jokes made about another nationality, particularly where there is a fraught history.

It is actually perfectly possible to have, and demonstrate, a sense of humour without having to resort to racial, national or gender stereotypes. "Carry on" style humour
is not the pinnacle of human achievement. It has its place in time and history but I read a lot of side-splittingly funny stuff on here that manages to avoid reductionist stereotypical jokes. As I said, will I say this in real life? No, people would think I was up my own arse.. but truthfully, I don't like it and I certainly wouldn't encourage it.

I think you should unclench a little - I'm a big-breasted blonde from Essex, but still love an Essex girl joke (Q: How does an Essex girl hold her liquour? A: By the ears).

OK: not killingly funny .

Nasty racist jokes are, of course, a different matter. I think you should probably focus on teaching your children to see the distinction.

Personally, I think jokes like this are lame and should have gone out with the Ark. National stereotypes are everywhere, whether it's about France, Ireland, Poland or England, and to some extent it's unavoidable but you should make sure that your DCs are getting positive ideas about other countries as well as out-of-date prejudices.

I grew up with a lot of prejudice against English people (arrogant, racist bullies who attack and invade other people's countries ) but it hasn't stopped me being friends with English people and travelling to England and being open to other, broader ideas about Englishness (literature, food, music etc) so a few anti-Irish jokes won't turn your DCs into racists overnight, I'm sure! My concern would be that your DCs think it's normal to laugh at Irish people and tell the jokes to other kids at school. If they have Irish children at school or people of Irish origins, your DCs might come across badly or even be warned by the teacher. If I had kids who were at school who heard Irish jokes being told, I would ask the teachers to have a word with the parents as I would find it offensive so you do run the risk of offending people with jokes like this.

That is my view. Other people might not be offended at all, as the above posts indicate. You've obviously taken precautions by having a word with your DCs and making it clear that it's not nice to laugh at people because of where they're from and that's good as you're obviously keen to show your DCs that their grandad's jokes wouldn't be considered funny by everyone. As long as they're aware of that, that's the main thing.

Yes, and InMyPrime, I had all these jokes and stereotypes about the English too.. and here's the thing, half of thinking that they were funny was because we believed it.

I grew up, I came here, I loved it. Stereotypes blown out of the water.. but the fact is, I do sometimes meet people (not necessarily Irish, by the way) who will tell English jokes and in the same breath ask quite seriously how I can "stick" living with the English who are all: a) superior, b) cold and c) unfriendly, with no sense of family or community.

I suppose the acid-test is to turn the Irish joke into an English one and see do you laugh. If yes, tell away.. if suddenly you come over all cats-bum-mouth about it, then there may be an underlying prejudice that is nothing to laugh about.

I think the distinction is that while I wouldn't flinch if my English FIL or someone of his generation told an Irish joke, I probably would flinch if I heard someone of my generation do the same. Nobody really thinks Irish people are thick, which is usually the premise of an Irish joke - and as I said, as a kid we picked on people from Kerry. We didn't actually think everyone from Kerry was thick, which is very different from a racist joke where the teller clearly does feel negatively towards whatever race they're mocking.

And arses, you're right - they're not especially funny jokes on the whole. And they'll die out when my FIL's generation dies out.

Hmm... I stopped finding Irish jokes funny when at 14, a friend of mine looked at me in horror when I said my mum was Irish, saying "but your mum CAN'T be Irish... she's intelligent!"

And this was from a Catholic schoolgirl on The Wirral, where most of us were either of Irish or Welsh extraction. My mum was absolutely gobsmacked that an otherwise sane, intelligent girl could think that way - made us realise how insidious stereotypes are.

It is probably a generational thing but you are right to discourage it. The world has indeed gone ott with pc-ness but how can you explain the difference between an Irish joke and a 'racist' joke.

It irks me that people get on their high horse about racist jokes aimed at some races but find jokes about other Europeans like the Irish, French or Scots ok. It is hypocritical actually. I don't take every comment about the Irish personally but as an Irish person in the UK I really bite my tongue at some of the patronising comments aimed at us even when they are not maliciously intended (which is usually the case.)

Good posts, arses.

These jokes simply compound stereotypes, never good and seldom, if ever, funny.

"It irks me that people get on their high horse about racist jokes aimed at some races but find jokes about other Europeans like the Irish, French or Scots ok. It is hypocritical actually."

Always wondered that myself. Jokes about Irish people don't bother me but then neither do jokes about other races. If you're happy for one group to get the pissed ripped out of them like the Irish then I don't see how you can get pissed off if someone does the same about another group of people such as black people.

It's akin to on here where you might see someone say someone "threw a paddy" and some will give out to the poster while others will defend them and claim people are being uptight/pc gone mad, yet nobody would dream of defending somebody who said something along the lines of "he was wroking like a black".

What does, 'throwing a paddy' mean?

I'm Irish and have never thrown myself to the ground in a rage and wailed uncontrollably for not getting my own way....well, not in the last 6 months anyway.

The difference between nationality jokes and racist jokes is about whether the joke is based on real experiences or just mean prejudice and ignorance. Someone laughing about Irish people being 'thick' is not basing that on any knowledge of Ireland or having met Irish people, it's just some bizarre racist cliche that has embedded itself in English culture.

An example of the difference is how DH and I sometimes laugh about Germans - we both lived in Germany, have German friends etc but some aspects of German culture were a little trying for us as foreigners so we do laugh now and then at stereotypical (in our experience) German behaviour like pointing out inane facts to demonstrate superior knowledge of some obscure area no-one cares about or rigigly sticking to rules for the sake of it etc. The big difference is that we don't make tasteless jokes about all Germans being evil Nazis because we know Germans and have lived there and understand something of German history. People who do call all Germans Nazis or say that Irish people are thick are basing their 'jokes' on ignorance.

So I guess that's a long-winded way of saying, jokes are racist when they're based on dehumanizing, nasty stereotypes. I would include Irish 'jokes' in that because they are about using a dehumanizing, nasty cliche about Irish people rather than harmless joshing between neighbouring nations.

"some bizarre racist cliche that has embedded itself in English culture" - actually, it's embedded in UK culture.

It depends on the joke - A Scotsman, Englishman and an Irish man walks into a bar type thing can be very funny. If it's out and out racist based on a national stereotype then it can be pretty unfunny - but then again some of Omid Djalili's (for example) jokes mock the racial stereotype and they are hilarious