Are you laughing? Then it might depend on who you are, who you're with and where you're reading this article.

Mainstream audiences may consider black comedians such as Chris Rock and Asian comics such as Margaret Cho popular now, but often their jokes are based in pain, Ponce says.

Liao and his brother have designed Asian face shirts with overly exaggerated black slanted lines for eyes for years. But recently, Liao says, he decided to take the shirts off the Web.

"People are angry," he says. "Other Asians are angry that I'm doing this. They think that it's a step back."

The worst part, he says, was hearing from older people.

"It was emotionally troubling for them. Why do that?" Liao says. "Why upset old, nice Chinese folks?" New designs are on the way, he says.

Even the Abercrombie T-shirts were actually coined by a Korean-American designer, though Abercrombie's corporate blue-eyed, blond marketing probably diluted the impact of an Asian-American creator.

The acceptance of ethnic humor in the mainstream is often a sign that a group has established a level of comfort and presence in the dominant culture, Lowe says.

"One of the ways people show they've made it and fit in is they're comfortable with self-reflexive jokes," Lowe said. Prime example are Jewish comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld.

"If you have arrived, it could be therapeutic," Liao says. "If you haven't arrived, it might be even more essential to have this type of ethnic humor."

Of course, ethnic humor can also reflect the oversimplifications of a society scared to confront race issues and eager to whitewash ethnic groups.