How did Poles get the reputation for being stupid?And when did the slang "Polack" start?
by 
tomchan
ANSWERS: 4
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The term has been around so long that no one really knows it's origin - all it means is Polish person. As for the reputation - what is especially odd about it is wholly untrue it is. Culturally, the Polish are hard workers who strive for creative and intellectual intelligence. But they have also experiences several periods of persecution and have fled from their country and emmigrated. When large groups enter another country, we tend to try to degrade them to protect us from our own insecurities. It happened with the Poles who came to the states in the 1880's, the Polsih Jews to the U.S. during WWII and the Poles going to England now. There are "dumb" jokes for just about every culture. The Polish ones have just somehow risen to be commonplace. Did you know that Copernicus was Polish???
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English "Polacks" come from German "Polacken". The stereotype of stupid Poles in the USA was not propagated by Poles but by Germans. These were not even utterly Nazi stereotypes, but yet Prussian stereotypes from the 19th century. All started from Johann Georg Forster (who for the first time wrote about "Polacken" and "polnische Wirtschaft" in his "Letters from Vilnius") and the book titled "Soll und Haben" published in 1855. Also Prussian propaganda - it was yet after the partitions - invented the German "bürgerliche Klugheit" as the opposite of "polnische Wirtschaft". Over 100 years of propagating stereotypes and vehement nationalistic Prussian propaganda (strictly connected with Germanization) influenced the Nazi ideology. What is ironic is that the term "polnische Wirtschaft" was invented in the city of Vilna, which is considered as Lithuanian, not Polish.
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I'm afraid I've contributed to it with my questions & answers on Answerbag...
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And, by the way: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article697134.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00095/TIM091WsgrC27_95371a.gif [img]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00095/TIM091WsgrC27_95371a.gif[/img]
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