Informant Data:

The informant is an American who was born in Riverside, California in 1956. He owns a construction company and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Contextual Data:

My informant heard four jokes from a friend of his and he wanted to share the jokes with me. The following is one of these jokes. It’s worthy of noting that my informant chuckled after telling the joke. When asked why he found the joke funny, my informant said that he didn’t know why the joke appealed to him, but said it was just “stupid humor.”

Item:

“What do you call a bunch of Mexicans running down a hill? Jail break.”

Analysis:

This seems to speak to a stigma against Mexican people prevalent in present-day American society, and particularly in California, a notion that it is assumed that disproportion number of Hispanic people engage in criminal activity. This is a good example of Blason populaire, or folklore items that play off of stereotypes.