You can find all sorts of weird things on the web ... including Answers.com's made-up version of where the Dumb Polak stereotype comes from.
Where do people come up with this stuff? And why do they pretend that they know something when they don't?
Luckily many people are aware enough not to believe everything they read on the web.
You can read the full Answers.com invented history of Polak jokes here.
Here is an excerpt:
"The phrase 'dumb Polack' generated after WWII. When Hitler's army invaded Poland, the Nazi soldiers were ordered to hunt down and kill any person of intelligence in the country. This included: authors, painters, teachers, and any other person with a high level of education. With all the intelligent people of Poland murdered, the phrase came to be because the "dumb" citizens were left to pass on their genes to future generations. Sad but true."
Friday, November 28, 2014
2 comments:
Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
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Useful all-purpose villains, those Nazis. Its not too clear who they are/were any more, but we can certainly blame them for everything.
ReplyDeleteIronically to this flippant invented history, it is not entirely without basis in fact.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few Poles have suggested that the total incompetence and corruptibility of Poland's present rulers largely stems from the fact that the best Poles had been murdered by the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists, leaving only second-stringers to rule Poland. Before that, untold generations of the best Poles had been murdered or exiled while Poland had been under foreign rule for 123 years since the Partitions.
Whether the losses are genetic or not depends, of course, to what extent intelligence and leadership are heritable traits.