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Anon goes to dinner with coworkers
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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The potato joke is also a joke about a genocide.
Legitimately, if they're American, the people in HR probably wouldn't even believe you if you told them about what actually happened during the Irish famine, or how England treated them for decades directly leading to "the troubles"
They would assume you're making it up.
I'm not joking
I was more or less taught in school "oh well it was an oopsie-woopsie, all the crops died but England tried to help them! Oh well, such a terrible natural disaster."
I didn't learn about the darker side of things until I read into it outside school.
The US education system is a joke.
Curious. I wonder if the region you grew up in influenced this at all... as I am from an area full of ethnically Irish folk whose roots trace back to emigres during the famine, and we definitely were taught that the bloody English were to blame!
Yeah, I'm certain areas with more Irish heritage are going to have a better grasp of things.
I grew up in an area primarily composed of English, Scottish, and French immigrant descendants.
Oh, then what's the problem?
The Irish genocide is far enough in the past to have become sort of "folklore".
No one who experienced it is still alive or in living memory.
That makes it better suited for small talk, and not equivalent to the Israeli genocide.
Oh it's still in living memory, Ireland and Irish culture still hasn't recovered from it.
The population has barely recovered, in fact. If i recall correctly, it was within the past five years that the Irish population exceeded pregenocide levels.
Can't hold a potato if both hands are full of grudges, though. 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah, cause the english definetly haven't continued fucking over Ireland since then. /s
Tiocfaidh ár lá
By that logic we'll be allowed to laugh about Jews and ovens in about 60 years, right?
I don't know what you mean by "allowed", AFAIK there is no western country (not even Germany) where it would be illegal. I don't know the law in Israel.
My friends and me made lots of those jokes 30 years ago.
Not proud of it at all, but we were edgy 12-year-olds.
I'm guessing allowed by taste, not by law.
Also, unlike the Shoa/Holocaust, it's not that commonly known that the potato famine was a genocide, inflicted by the english.
That doesn't make the Iseraeli's comment ok. Just that they probably didn't know how much their comment was in bad taste.
Would you mind explaining what happened? I don't know anything about Irish History.
They were colonized by the British and essentially taxed through landlords above their ability to produce, but were allowed to support themselves on potatoes, which was okay (not really) until there was a blight damaging the potato crops, which brought on huge amounts of emigration and led to over a million people starving to death. If you want to read more
Thanks. Now I understand, why that joke was quite an asshole joke.
I'd like to tangentially add that Irish people are possible the most chillest when it comes to their ethnicity and identity. About 11 years ago, I got obsessed with pretending I was Irish for a few months during and after dating an Irish-American girl. I had a terrible fake accent, drank Jameson or Maker's Mark, bragged about my fame with Irish good-bye's, etc. I am in no way Irish in the slightest, and I don't think anyone would even think that. Not one Irish person seemed offended. If anything, they welcomed it and found it entertaining at the least. I think that if I did that with any other ethnicity, people would at least be offended if not angry and retaliatory.
Anyone else experience this? If so, any insight on why this may be?