Tag Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

Wolf of Wall Street’s got nothing on this…

Nationality: African American

Primary Language: English

Other language(s): French

Age: 65

Occupation: Management Consultant

Residence: Upstate, NY

Performance Date: 4/20/2025

Context: 

My informant, WB, is a family member of mine who lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York. For a while now, I’ve known WB to be quite amazing at spending money, teaching me over the course of my life the concept of not wasting money on things that won’t be intrinsic in some capacity, or I’d end up like ‘another man on the street.’ Now, I always wanted to know what they meant by ‘man on the street,’ and it turns out it wasn’t a saying, metaphorical expression, or proverb, it was a reference to a stereotype they hated, yet held dear: 

Text: 

“Men are better with money than women. Now I don’t believe that but it’s something I grew up hearing. I come from a matriarchal family of successful women who oversaw and currently still oversee the family finances and the family business. They have all fared well and have been given the respect of being good with finances by their male family members and spouses especially. I think that saying came from an attempt for men to control women, like historically. We can look back in history and see when a man married a woman, her riches became his to control. Specifically in the most recent history, Colonial America, who followed the laws of their mother country; husbands controlled the woman’s property!!!” 

Analysis: 

So, this piece reflects a common gender-based folk belief which operates more as a social myth or stereotype than a truthfully grounded in experience. Now what’s compelling here is how the informant challenges the saying from both a personal and historical perspective. They come from a matriarchal family, where women not only handle finances but have consistently done so with success and respect. That alone functions as a counter-example that refutes the original saying and exposes it as culturally constructed rather than inherently true. However, I’ve definitely heard of this stereotype in my own life too, and of course, being related to WB, I never believed it either. The informant then takes it a step further by providing some slight historical context that reveals how the proverb wasn’t just a reflection of beliefs at the time, but also a tool used to justify inequality. And of course, in my research, and general experience in American history courses, yes, this stereotype was used tangibly to oppress women in colonial times and even still now in the digital age. Sadly some things never change. Though what I find most powerful here is that WB doesn’t just dismiss the saying they expose its function as control and offer real evidence from their family to disprove it. This turns the proverb into a kind of anti-folklore, still resembling folklorism though, a saying that survives culturally, even when it’s contradicted by lived experience. It’s also a good example of how folklore can be deeply personal and political at the same time, and how challenging traditional sayings can be part of reclaiming cultural and historical agency.

Redneck Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: Feb 2022
Primary Language: English
Language: none

Text: 

Q: Do you have any jokes you remember from back home.

R: “How to tell if you are a redneck”, people always said those

Q: So do you remember any redneck jokes in particular.

R: I think one went, how do you know if you are a Redneck? 

Q: How?

R: When your your wife has less teeth than your Jack O lantern

Q: Oh my God I can hear J*** J**** telling that one. That was good thanks

Context: THis was a joke told in the early teen years in Southwest Pennsylvania. Many of these jokes were around at the time. The informant was 14 or so at the time and heard it from one of his peers. 

Analysis: This joke was actually told by my brother so I have a good insight into the culture it came out of myself. We lived on a small collective in Southwest Pennsylvania about ten miles from West Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. These jokes were very funny because they were so relatable. We lived among Rednecks but were not Rednecks so it was easy to make jokes about. This is to me a clear example of Blason Populaire, jokes or belief about a specific group. 

Dumb southerners

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Marietta, Georgia
Performance Date: 4/19/19
Primary Language: English

Main piece: A common stereotype is that people from the Southeast are fat, uneducated, racist rednecks.

Context: The informant (S) is originally from Marietta, Georgia, and their lineage traces back to Germany on both sides of their family. They are a high school student about to graduate and head off to Boston for college. They were raised Christian and consider themselves spiritual, but they do not align themselves with any organized religion. Our conversation took place over FaceTime while S cleaned their room and played Tame Impala in the background. S has heard this stereotype of Southerners their entire life, both from Georgians and non-Georgians alike. Interestingly, S even jokes about this stereotype having some truth to it: “When you go to school in the suburbs of Georgia and see people with confederate flag stickers on their cars, it’s hard not to label those around you as uneducated racists!” In all seriousness, S knows many people (including themself) who actively work hard to not become or buy into this stereotype. They want to prove people wrong and change the overall social climate of Georgia.

Personal thoughts: S and I will both maintain that this stereotype has tidbits of truth to it, but even more so than our personal experiences as Georgians, this conception of Southerners has solid historical basis – a quality that not every stereotype bears. To be obvious… the Civil War, in which the South was fighting to keep slavery alive and well. Some people may vaguely argue that the war was about “states’ rights,” but consider what rights Southern states were fighting to maintain – the right to own slaves. It would be naive to think that those age-old mentalities have simply disappeared, especially when almost every Georgian either knows somebody who owns a Confederate flag or owns one themself. One hundred years after slavery came the tumultuous yet impactful Civil Rights Movement, proving that racism never ended with slavery. Even today, lynchings and hate crimes occur way too often in the Southeast. So, while it is increasingly important for Southerners to educate ourselves on social/political issues, advocate for others and fight back against hate groups that give us a bad name, it is also equally important to recognize that these somewhat hurtful stereotypes derive from truth. Instead of getting defensive about them, we must acknowledge the South’s history of racism and subjugation, and prove with our actions that we are working to remedy that painful history.

Chinese Restaurant Clapping Game

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student/Musician
Residence: Pennsylvania/California
Performance Date: 4/11/19
Primary Language: English

Context

Having collected a fairly common children’s game, thumb wars, I sought a game or rhyme that was more obscure. While familiar with similar games such as Paddy Cake (which the informant mentioned for reference), I had never heard of the Chinese Restaurant variant.

Main Piece

When I was little, on the playground we used to have… it was a sort of “paddy cake”-like game that had, um… a rhyme about a Chinese restaurant. So you would start and you would clap your hands together and clap opposite hands with your partner, and it would be like:

“I went to a Chinese restaurant 

To buy a loaf of bread bread bread

The waiter asked me what I want 

And this is what I said said said”

and then you would point to your eye and say:

“I know karate”

then you would punch and say:

“Punch in the body”

Then you would cover your hands with your mouth and say:

“Oops I’m sorry”

Then you would wag your finger and say:

“Don’t tell my mommy”

And then the most upsetting part is that you would move your eyelids in accordance with people’s race, so you would say:

“Chinese” — pull your eyelids up — or down, I don’t remember

“Japanese” — pull your eyelids up and then you say:

“Freeze!”

And then whoever said “check please!” first would win.

Notes

As the informant notes, the game is upsetting, enforcing the kind of racial stereotypes and prejudices that would have been seen as innocuous in past decades. As such, I would classify it as an example of blason populaire. It is through games and rhymes such as these, shared among children during their formative years, that casual racism insidiously engrains itself into young minds. Thankfully, the informant grew up and now recognizes the problematic nature of this game, but many others likely do not, and maybe even teach it to their children one day.

No Dancing in Texas/China

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: La Crescenta, CA
Performance Date: 3/12/17
Primary Language: English

Context: I collected this from a high school friend when we were on a camping trip together over Spring Break.

Background: My friend was originally born in Texas, where his father is from, before moving to California as a child. His mother is an immigrant from China.

Dialogue: Yeah, um, again, I wrote a paper for dance history class that was in freshman year, about my personal experience with dance, and the professor gave me 100%, pulled me out of the class, and said, “Hey, I really enjoyed that paper, it was really cool, and I really appreciated the way that you opened up in the paper about your experiences,” because I wrote about how I have absolutely NO personal cultural experience with dance, like, in my life… Um… And that was due to the fact that my father was from the Deep South, and there, uh, at least for men, dance was seen as… something that was highly effeminate, and, like, if you danced it would somehow make you gay, um, and being from the Deep South he didn’t want me to be gay… So, I just NEVER danced as a child! And, then, on my mother’s side of the family, I had no cultural experience with dance because… uh, she was from China, but she was born under the Mao regime, and, um, during that time, a LOT of forms of art were actually pushed, um, out of the cultural sphere… And so there wasn’t really any dance except for this one dance that they did was like, “Hail the Might Mao” or whatever. Um… And, most forms of art were pushed out, so I had no culture of dance from that side either.

Analysis: I debated whether or not to check this under the Folk Dance category, but went against it because there isn’t actually a dance to be learned or performed. It’s interesting to compare these two different types of censorship, and see how much they’re based on the same kind of ideals. While the Maoist restriction of dance and art forms in general is more a complete totalitarian regime, the Deep South’s stereotyping and discrimination against gay people is more focused and specific. Yet they’re both based on the idea of controlling what people do through the use of villainization (against art and homosexuality, respectively).