Why are Belgian jokes told by a Dutch person or vice versa not offensive, but jokes about blacks or Turks discriminatory?

But everything depends on the context. If you play a risqué prank on someone who is strong, they will probably laugh at it; If you try the same joke with someone who is socially insecure, for example who has been bullied before, you run the risk that they will not see the humor in it and will only feel hurt.

A good joker takes this into account: no matter how good a joke is, sometimes the “victim” just isn’t in a position to laugh at it because the insult hits too hard. If someone’s drunken great-uncle has been dead for several years, you can dare to joke about that, but not about his mother who passed away yesterday.

Between Belgians and Dutch people sometimes an unfriendly word, but in general we feel more or less equal. There is no great inequality in wealth, social status, employment, etc.; no discrimination, no racism. There’s a lot of mutual understanding and few cultural differences — so we live right next door to each other. And there are about the same number of us. In most cases, a Belgian therefore has no special reason to feel insecure in the presence of a Dutch person, and vice versa.

It is often different between a Belgian and a Moroccan (for example). The cultural and social differences are greater, and therefore also the lack of understanding, so that you get the feeling that the other person despises your culture. Moreover, you cannot ignore the fact that there is a lot of racism: every Moroccan in Belgium is sometimes confronted with tasteless “jokes” that are really only intended to hurt, or with outright insults. And Moroccans are a minority in Belgium: it may be difficult for us to imagine that, but something like this certainly contributes to feeling threatened or insulted more quickly.

That is why humor is often more sensitive in that context.

Even if your company consists exclusively of non-Moroccans, we are still aware of the existence of hurtful, sour, tasteless racism. Even a good joke can be too reminiscent of such expressions, which also often fill the stomachs of non-Moroccans. If you know each other well and know that the other person really doesn’t mean any harm, you can go a little further.

In this way humor can actually have a liberating effect on this issue. Between the Belgian and the Moroccan from our example, a careful joke can indicate that you trust each other; that you assume that the other person understands that you have no bad intentions. If such intercultural jokes ever get completely out of the taboo atmosphere, that might be a good thing: it could mean that Belgians and Moroccans are ready to interact with each other as casually, as teasingly but as confidently as Belgians and Dutch. But you can’t force something like that; humor is and remains delicate.