I'm a slav and from the balkans, we're either portrayed as tracksuit wearing thugs, drunks or in some relation to the balkan wars. So what?
We even have our own comedy tv series playing with the stereotypes (eg. Kursadzije), where all the stereotypes are used all the time (serbs and croats have historic "issues", montenegrins are lazy, bosnians are stupid and slovenians are femboys)... people like this, they laugh at this, and watch it, in all of the mentioned countries and wider.
Somehow it's always "someone else" that gets offended... same for 2balkan2you subreddit, where a (probably american) admin doesn't get the difference between romanians and roma/gypsy people.
Even with games... stuff like gta 4 just makes people trying to guess what Niko tried to say, because his serbian/serbocroatian accent/pronounciation is horrible in the game.
Indeed, it always seems that it's not the prejudiced party being offended but rather others on their belief. It is similar to the comments about, for example, wearing a kimono and it being deemed cultural appropriation by everyone except Japanese people who gladly welcome sharing their culture. Can they show me even a few Indians who were offended by Raj?
Another stereotype that exists is that all balkans are raging racists and will start war with anyone close by because they deem them subhuman. This is just a stereotype, so "so what?" right? And when you are waving off "laughing at stupid bosnians" as "so what?" this doesn't contradict that stereotype but rather reinforces it. So do you think it's fair that I assume you are indeed racist and treat you as such? You won't get angry or upset?
If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park), italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses" (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget blondes.
Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)? Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope. So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's even a movie just with jokes about them... made by bosnians of course - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/
We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in serbia, it's people from pirot).
A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for other people.
edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to historic reasons, mostly war-related.
ps: What you americans would call racism could only be mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the house (or basically anything metal), that it was the gypsies. Usually it's even true.
The thing about stereotypes is that they are not just harmless props only to be used in comedy. They are common simplifications that we all use to some extent whether we like it or not. But some stereotypes are more harmful than others because they are used in very non-funny contexts to justify violence and oppression. And when you use those stereotypes in a funny-ha-ha way, you get some cheap laughs but at the same time you reproduce the stereotype and make it stronger. So a harmless "all jews are greedy and therefore it's funny that the jewish main character loses track of a conversation and starts to chase a dollar bill blowing down the street" gag [canned laughter] is the fertile ground where you plant plain antisemitic "jews are to greedy we need them out of our society" seeds.
But what do I know I'm just a PC SJW you know how we are, constantly bitching about "no more violence", incredibly naive because of course there will always be pogroms, "it's just human nature". [canned laughter]
Yes, yes that is what I said. No fun! Having fun and enjoying oneself is the road to outright fascism. You laugh, you kill babies. It's as simple as that.
So, you wan't to 'cancel' 80% of the comedy, because you're afraid other people will get offended? ...possibly those, who paid a ticket to laugh at the "offensive" stuff?
Not every pun is safe but every pun should be created in a SAFE environment to enable alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams!
I'm a slav and from the balkans, we're either portrayed as tracksuit wearing thugs, drunks or in some relation to the balkan wars. So what?
We even have our own comedy tv series playing with the stereotypes (eg. Kursadzije), where all the stereotypes are used all the time (serbs and croats have historic "issues", montenegrins are lazy, bosnians are stupid and slovenians are femboys)... people like this, they laugh at this, and watch it, in all of the mentioned countries and wider.
Somehow it's always "someone else" that gets offended... same for 2balkan2you subreddit, where a (probably american) admin doesn't get the difference between romanians and roma/gypsy people.
Even with games... stuff like gta 4 just makes people trying to guess what Niko tried to say, because his serbian/serbocroatian accent/pronounciation is horrible in the game.