But as for question, yes, we do say those things here. But I'm from the European mainland, and we do enjoy stereotyping each other. That has nothing to do with racism or bigotry, but with acknowledging and celebrating differences. I'm reminded of a comic that I came across around the time of the introduction of the Euro, and I saved it because I thoroughly enjoyed it: https://imgur.com/a/SmdkRLZ
So please, do not assume malice whenever someone points out cultural differences. Humor can be a connecting force, not just a dividing one.
I can't speak for Japanese people since I never met any.
I don't know if your reaction is representative of US culture, but having to tip toe around words and not say what you think doesn't scream free country to me.
Being from the US, and not being part of the vocal minority that reacts like this, I will agree with you that the last few years have increased the sense that we aren't really free to say things that deviate from the 'approved opinion'.
Unfortunately, at least in American culture, many of these stereotypes about what it "means" to be Japanese / German / Italian or what it means to have the role of "girlfriend" or "wife" or "husband" are reinforced in us from an early age. Wives are supposed to be controlling and manipulative. Men are expected to be stoic breadwinners and utterly incompetent when it comes to household duties like cooking or child-rearing.
For example, look at any show produced by Disney Channel in the 2000s -- it's all about petty relationship drama and manufactured conflict where characters overreact rather than having tough conversations. Technically the shows are trying to give examples of bad behavior, as there is usually a lesson learned in the last ~30s of the episode, but the characters seem to reset to their usual, horrible selves by the next week's episode.
Workplaces vary a lot.
In some, yes people do. This sort of thing and much stronger stuff is circulated in company-wide "joke" emails too. However there does tend to be an element of self-deprecation, in that you'll get people circulating jokes about inept women, and also jokes about inept men. Rarely in the same email of course.
In others, you'd be fired after a few repeats, as you say.
With Europe, as someone commented, some of these things can be understood in a slightly more humorous way if it's about other "friendly" European cultures, because some of the cultures are quite friendly with each other. They're not at war, so it's intended (and really meant and to some extent understood) in a more playful way. There's plenty of it, including on magazine covers.
Between England and France there's been culture jokes for a long time; I've always imagined that's a healthy modern echo of more serious hostility from a long time ago.
Similar to the way you'll see black music groups using the N word affectionately, and it's not offensive because of who is using it.
But for example even in Europe, if someone in say Germany started making ambiguous joke/not-joke jokes about modern fascists in Hungary, I don't think it would be regarded as just friendly humour for long because it touches a nerve. And when I lived in France I heard people talk about Serbians as though they are "all" quite unpleasant. So the European cultures aren't all friendly with each other. There's history there, and some kind of inter-cultural meme evolution.
Speaking from personal experience, the stereotype about Italian girlfriends is not inaccurate.
This formulation means: those in a position of relative social power, expect those in subordinate positions to accept stereotyping etc. at the expense of their own and other subordinate classes.
The humor, and this rejection of censure, is done to ritually encode and underscoring of the received power hierarchy.
In a world in which such rituals are being openly named, and confronted, it is very common for those called out to feel defensive, and act out of that defensiveness.
Wow your a hell of a wannabe Whiteknight...at least fight him/her, but you will lose if it's a Italian women, but you win if it's an Italian man....especially if he plays soccer.
To be honest, that is also pretty weird, wandering into "wrong"-territory. At least if you are prescribing negative stereotypes to a culture.
(Definition of bigoted from Wikipedia)
Stereotypes can be harmful, but they oftentimes are based in reality. Yes, the formalities of an average Japanese are almost incomprehensible to an average Italian. What's the problem with that? The world is fortunately colorful, and making jokes about its colorfulness is not necessarily evil.
As the other commenter mentioned, "bigoted" implies "intolerant". A joke about culture differences isn't intolerant of those cultures; you're just overreacting.
And as someone else mentioned, the Japanese, Germans and Italians do not want or need you to save them. Maybe you should dial it back a bit.
I constantly hear jokes about football. Having played football and being a person with "two left feet", I have heard numerous jokes about that, and about how I must not be Brazilian, since I don't command the ball like Ronaldinho.
I'm fine with that. It's playful. It's fun. I make jokes back and everybody is a friend.
There's also the Samba jokes and stereotypes. They are fun. They are ice breakers and can make an awkward social interaction more fluent.
You know what offends me? When people from the USA call their country "America", like they own the whole continent.
Amerigo Vespucci, the man whose name served as the basis for naming the so called "new world", didn't even arrive in the northern part of the continent, much less in what is now the USA.
Cripstopher Columbus, who arrived in the continent even before Vespucci, didn't arrive there either, but at Guanahani, in the Bahamas.
When America was named America, there was no USA.
Calling that country America is the equivalent of uniting a few European countries, calling them United States of Europe and then culturally pressuring the rest of the continent (and the world) into calling them Europe, pretending the rest of the continent never had that name.
The cultural, military, pollitical and economical power play that the USA have been imposing on the rest of the continent since at least the 1940s is by far worse than any stereotype joke that you might have heard in your workplace.
I was born in America. The USA can never take that away from me.
Uncivilised is to impose your views upon the rest of the world with zero regard to cultural differences.
As my late grandfather would say: "don't judge others as though they are yourself."
Edit: Even before I posted, I was aware this was going to be downvoted. That's fine. It's not easy to admit you're not as holy as you might think. It's far easier to use your own power to crush the "subordinate class" rather than actually acknowledge them. Downvote away. I will still be an American, born in America.
I have no clue what on the world you are talking about.
Above is true. But below is also true:
> make many immigrant coworkers deeply uncomfortable (especially if they are women)
You can also add gay people, trans, etc - and even things like being smart, or stupid, or being a man or woman, or blond or redhead or... etc - to the list who have to endure feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome (and often keeping it to themselves or playing along) in a workplace where "they" are made fun of regularly.
I think it's because humour and oppression both exist, and actual for real consequences of the latter have been very severe and sometimes still are. It's hard to tell how much of each is really in process at any moment, so of course it's uncomfortable, and of course if someone feels they have to fit in to keep in their colleague's good books at work, they'll tend to keep their discomfort and background to themselves.
One thing about these kind of jokes, is they vary a lot in how much prejudice they encode. For example, there is a stereotype in Australian culture of the "whingeing pom", the person from England who always complains, and there is a tradition of jokes based on that stereotype. Does that mean the English are oppressed in Australia, or that Australians hate English people? Or is it more like when you gently tease your friends and family? (To use an Americanism, "joshing"). It is not like the English recipients of this kind of teasing don't have plenty of comebacks – jokes about Australians being all descended from criminals, etc. (See also [1].) I think there is a big difference between those kinds of gentle jokes which don't really encode any significant degree of racial/ethnic prejudice, and other sorts of jokes that do – it depends a lot on who is making the joke, which group is the target, and the nature and history of the relationship between the joke-teller's group and the target group.
Regardless of all that, I wouldn't tell those kinds of jokes in a work environment – some people are likely to be offended, and causing offence isn't worth it. (Plus I rarely tell jokes of any sort, since telling jokes has never been my strong suit). But if other workplaces, in other countries, have different cultures in which those kinds of jokes are more acceptable, I'm not going to judge those cultures negatively because of it, and try to exhibit enough cultural sensitivity to realise that cultures like that exist, and I'm not going to say that my culture is superior to theirs.
(You also mentioned the gendered aspect of the jokes; I would expect that attitudes towards gendered jokes and how they are experienced also vary from culture to culture – and that women experience them differently in different cultures, and even individual women may experience them differently in the same culture – but I don't feel like I know enough about that whole issue to say more than that.)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/08/what-b...
Speaking for myself, I understand that no harm was meant; and that those my age grew up in a world in which such humor was not commonly judged offensive.
This world has moved on fortunately. Please do not perpetuate this culture on HN.