how many polacks in japan does it take to recognize shoe polish?

The other day, for a low/intermediate discussion class, I was going through some teaching materials. The purpose of the class was to practice correctly describing what various things are and how they work or how you use them (which actually sounds a little easier than it is, as far as forming full, grammatically correct sentences go). Example:

What's that?
It's a cellphone.
What's it for?
It's for pretending to talk on when you're walking past someone handing out stuff on the street so you don't have to take what they're handing out because your other hand is in your pocket, SUCKERS.

Except more serious. Anyway, there were some pictures of some household items to describe; microwaves, spatulas, placemats. And then there was this:



And here's how it went (phonetically spelled-out for differentiation purposes):

Me: What's this? Poh-lish? I don't get it. What's Poh-lish about this? Is it a poh-lish ashtray? A poh-lish mirror? *shows to coworker*
Coworker: That's shoe pah-lish.
Me: *runs away*

You'd think I'd have more than a quarter of Polack blood in me based on this, wouldn't you?

I've really not been helping to debunk any stereotypes lately.