Would this be racist?

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Alright. With the whole PC thing I really was not sure.

The way my grandfather told it, it sounded like something that really happened until he got to the punchline.

Like someone else pointed out it is only a joke about translation.

Sadly, some people are only too willing to take offense "on behalf of others", or see meaning in things that are not there, or were not intended...It's almost like they are so insecure that they need to do this to make themselves seem more important than they would normally appear, or to "fit in" with the current "in-group".

Much like those trying to re-write history using current beliefs\norms and placing past actions\words around these.
Rather than reporting things as they occurred (and the conditions under which they occurred), they take things outside their original context, changing both the meaning and reasoning, when instead they should be reporting in the original context and comparing how the attitudes\beliefs\norms of the time differed from those currently in practice.

I vaguely remember hearing this joke before somewhere sometime long ago.

It MIGHT have been from a live performer I saw at a Smithsonian folk festival.



The nub of the joke was that the scared perp rattles off a long complicated story about where the loot is hidden, and the translator is just too lazy to translate it all. The performer told the guys story IN ENGLISH so the audience knew it was a complicated set of instructions. So it made the translators motivation obvious. If callous. Hence the joke. I don't remember feeling that the joke seemed racist at the time. Just part of southwest USA local color, and western lore.

The performer telling it might have been Mexican American himself. I dunno. But for whatever reason it didn't strike me as racist.

I am usually good at remembering jokes I have heard. But I think that what happened was that I heard a later better similar joke that bumped this version out of my head.

The later thing was Eddy Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. The bad guy, a steely eyed White guy named "Ganz", has an entire restaurant cordoned off for his entourage, and its surrounded by goons guarding it. Eddy Murphy asks a goon to allow Murphy in to talk to Ganz. The goon says "NO body talks to Ganz. If you gotta message give it to ME."

So Murphy ...instantly goes into his old SNL "Dion" character (the gay hairdresser) and starts talking a mile a minute...something about "since we had our last encounter....the doctor said I had herpes simplex.....".

"....so could YOU relay that message to him for me?".

The thug guard guy has a priceless look of...being overwhelmed and being grossed out...and much else...and turns to Murphy and says "uhhh…..maybe you should tell him yourself". And allows Murphy in. And then Murphy finds Ganz at the head table and ( and now back in straight tough male character) gets in the villian's face, and Ganz exclaims "how THE HELL did YOU get in here????".

Not QUITE the same joke, but similar. An intermediary person (translator/guard) gets overwhelmed by a story someone tells, and fails to relay the story to an authority figure.

The Beverly Hills Cop version isn't racist, but one might argue that it's homophobic.

Did you hear about the Pollock that went ice fishing?

He came back with 10 pounds of ice and his wife drowned trying to fry it.

I mean, yes you can substitute ethnicities where the stereotype is similar, but switch the Welshman for an African-American and the joke stops working.

you're right. I believe that it was 48 hours.

^ Yes, by me.

I was trying to elaborate to clarify my point, but failed.

My fault: should have specified I was using a variation on Hegel’s ‘part that stands for the whole’ operating within a single cultural context to illustrate the non-transferability of derogatory stereotypes within a shared cultural space.
Whoops!

How do you keep a Chinese guy from seeing what your doing?

Take some dental floss and blindfold them.

^ very naughty!
(smirks nonetheless)

^stop illustrating my point whilst making me laugh and feel guilty at the same time!