USA, Canada /
Why are Polish Americans mocked in the American media? [226]
The image question has long been the concern of conscious, active PolAms, although admittedly they do constitute a minority. Most are concerned only about money and consumerism.
Indeed, most Americans rarely if ever think about Poles, Poland or Polonia and may go through life without ever meeting one. But to conscious, thinking PolAms the negative image often attached to things Polish when they do turn up in the mainstream media is a cause for concern.
As already noted, there are multiple reasons for the negative image and non-image including:
-- Polish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the largest single group of Central-East European bread-seekers that came to America, and naturally had to take all the arduous, low-paying jobs;
-- The absence of an independent Poland meant that much of what made its way into the American mainstream about Poland came from German government, scholarly or media sources (and the Master Race mentality predated the Hitler years);
-- Unlike Jewish immigrants of the same period who saved up and sent the brightest of their kids to college to become a doctor, accountant or lawyer, Polish immigrants sent all their kids at age 16 or so (I'm speaking of the late 19th and early 20th centuries!) to the car factories, collieries, steelworks and abattoirs to increase the family's pay packets;
-- Poland's interbellum period was too short for any serious positive image-building, and in the US the image of Poles churned out by Hollywood was less than favourable (see Prof. Biskupski's 'Hollywood's War on Poland'). The pro-Soviet slant of WW2 propaganda reaching the US only helped entrench negative sentiments towards Poles;
-- Gomułka's 1968 anti-Jewish purge set off America's stand-up comics and other entertainment figures (most of whom are of ah, er, um...Norwegian...or is it Bolivian ancestry?!) and what could have been merely a passing Pollack joke phase (other ethnic joke waves had come and gone) was turned into an all-out smear campaign to deride and ridicule the Polish people;
-- It's easy enough to point the finger at external forces, so it should be stressed that Polish people are also to blame. Although they may be at each others' throats in their closed Polonian circle, they are known for their timidity, passivity and lack of assertiveness vis-à-vis the outside world. That has included both their ineffectiveness in combating Pollack jokes as well as their failure to convey a positive image, creating things with universal appeal and being culturally productive (music, books, films, etc.). Even now, most educated PolAms prefer safe, secure and well-paying jobs in business, medicine, accounting, law, etc., but how many PolAm singers, novelists, actors and others performers, film directors, script writers, journalists and academicians (esp. historians, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, etc.) are there? A successful PolAm dentist may have a grand house in the burbs with swimming pool and three pricey cars, but professionally he is not in a position to propagate the Polish heritage in the American mainstream the way a book author, film director or playwright can.
