"an ethnic joke, told within its own ethnic environment, strengthens the morale of the grup members and bolsters their sense of identity, but the very same joke may easily acquire a derisive and even insulting quality when told by an outsider who tried to imitate the tone and gestures typical of the ethnic group." (Zijderveld 1983)
There was an interesting (though outdated and therefore rather awful) thing I read about the reception of racial jokes. (Middleton 1959) found that black people enjoyed anti-white humour more than white people, but also that black people enjoyed anti-black humour more than white people enjoyed anti-white humour, and that there were more self-mocking jokes told in the black community than in the white community (although that's probably fairly obvious what with the blindess to white as a race thing).
"Yet, self-deprecating humour is not necessarily the result of such an instability of identity. When a minority has acquired a measure of self-consioucsness, self-deprecating humour may underscore its newly acquired identity and cn thereby strengthen its solidarity and cohesion" (Zijderveld again)
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Date: 2006-09-15 03:29 pm (UTC)"an ethnic joke, told within its own ethnic environment, strengthens the morale of the grup members and bolsters their sense of identity, but the very same joke may easily acquire a derisive and even insulting quality when told by an outsider who tried to imitate the tone and gestures typical of the ethnic group." (Zijderveld 1983)
There was an interesting (though outdated and therefore rather awful) thing I read about the reception of racial jokes. (Middleton 1959) found that black people enjoyed anti-white humour more than white people, but also that black people enjoyed anti-black humour more than white people enjoyed anti-white humour, and that there were more self-mocking jokes told in the black community than in the white community (although that's probably fairly obvious what with the blindess to white as a race thing).
"Yet, self-deprecating humour is not necessarily the result of such an instability of identity. When a minority has acquired a measure of self-consioucsness, self-deprecating humour may underscore its newly acquired identity and cn thereby strengthen its solidarity and cohesion" (Zijderveld again)