lol "im from poland and i never heard of racism" suuure i wonder what they call romani people ...
You mean cyganie. Thats pretty much just the coloquial name for romani pepole. Belive it or not other than ocasional old lady trying to scam you they never were that much of a problem in Poland nor they were treated particulary bad. In fact they are romanticised a bit in Poland.
Now they are still treated with wary beacuse obviusly they are. Its pretty hard to not be when most interaction general population have with them are them trying to scam you. Is the reason for them doing so beacuse of some historical racism in the south? Maybe. i dont know nor do i care .
Ignorance and racism are not the same thing. There's overlap, but even if it can be hurtful, ignorance is not malicious.
Ignorance born of environment is understandable.
Ignorance born of anti-intellectualism is malicious.
For a good time, ask central Europeans about the romani
^ This. In my native Hungary, as much as we would all count as "white" to someone from an actually racially diverse country, people are still super racist against Romani people. Even allegedly progressive people.
What does "malicious" mean here? Structural racism often doesn't have ill intent from any individual people, and nevertheless still affects people's daily lives.
There's a kind of stubborn ignorance which is very malicious. It's how we got trump, in part.
Europeans are so racist, one facet of the civil rights movement in the US was black GIs being treated as humans by europeans during the war and then returning to the jim crow US. There is absolutely racism in Europe, as a continent. However, most US commenters here are conflating being less politically correct than the US with the de facto batshit insane institutionalized racism that still prevails stateside. Call me when EU prisons are used as slave camps (populated overwhelmingly by black people) or we have a para-military neo-nazi force arresting people because of the colour of their skin. Meanwhile black people get access to healthcare in the EU and have higher life expectancy at birth within the EU than the progressive polite US of A...
Denmark forcibly sterilizing Greenland Inuit women, the general treatment of the Romani people, Brexiters crying about immigrants, oh hey look things are getting worse for black people, Zwarte Piet, golliwog dolls, the racism adjacent to Islamophobia...
It generally looks different in the US because a) the population is way less homogenous so different ethnic groups can both form distinct cultures and are more likely to interact with other groups and b) the core issues are baked into every facet of our history and fixing all of the lingering effects means actually facing and discussing all of it. This is complicated by a sizeable portion that are perfectly happy with a segregated society. We fought a war with ourselves about it and didn't actually fix anything in that process. (I suspect that a great many Europeans are also happy with a segregated society, and as long as that segregation is along country or even village borders they can pretend it's not the same kind of bigotry)
There is absolutely racism in Europe, as a continent. However, most US commenters here are conflating being less politically correct than the US with the de facto batshit insane institutionalized racism that still prevails stateside. Call me when EU prisons are used as slave camps (populated overwhelmingly by black people) or we have a para-military neo-nazi force arresting people because of the colour of their skin. Meanwhile black people get access to healthcare in the EU and have higher life expectancy at birth within the EU than the progressive polite US of A...
Also, since you mention Scandinavia you forgot the Sámi and the use of eugenics in Sweden well into the 60s...
What about "Zwarte Piet"? That has nothing to do with racism.
The use of exaggerated black features to depict a servant that originated as a slave demon has nothing to do with racism?
This is the kind of stuff this post is about. It's not that "Americans talk about race too much" it's that y'all don't talk about the problematic stuff enough so you don't even recognize it.
Call me when EU prisons are used as slave camps (populated overwhelmingly by black people)
Is prison labour only slavery if the prisoners are black people? Because prison labour is common in Europe.
European kids are taught that racism is bad but not how real, systemic, subtle racism actually looks. We are taught that slavery and hitler is bad, so our bar for what is acceptable is very low.
This is also why Europeans will get offended if you point out something subtly racist they did/said. They think you're straight-up comparing them to Hitler and the KKK.
That seems like how it is in the US too.
"Racism is only a thing very bad evil people do. I'm not an very bad evil person. Thus I cannot have done racism."
"what you said was kinda racist"
"How dare you, I'm not a racist!"
The unacknowledged shift from the adjective form "racist" to the noun form "racist" is the best indicator that someone doesn't really get what racism actually is in real life.
As an example of why that's wrong, I can do something stupid without being a stupid.
Trust me, A LOT of racists in America have no idea they are racist, and would be highly offended if you called them racist.
"I'm not racist! I work with a black guy at work all the time. I don't know much about him, I've never asked him about himself, but he's a pretty good guy, one of the good ones."
My European cousins tried to explain to me that it was weird how no Jewish people died in the twin towers on 9/11, like they had all been warned. I had to patiently explain that I had friends who died in 9/11, some were Jewish, and that whatever his source was, it was likely nazi propaganda, and extremely disrespectful to repeat obvious bullshit.
I remember hearing that conspiracy theory, snopes has a detailed page about its origins: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israelis-absent-911/
TLDR: originally it was not nazi, but Syrian propaganda. Obviously nazis pick up whatever fits their world view.
Europeans when asked about the Romani
Europeans don't actually talk about Romani all that much. The whole situation is still a big problem, the discrimination is real, a lot of people have old uninspected misconceptions, there are people who have active hate in their heart, but it's not a topic on anyone's mind. It's a small minority (~2% of population) that, ironically, lives in pretty compact communities predominately in south-eastern parts of Europe, and it's just not a thought that crosses most people's minds.
The actual racism that exists in Europe is mainly comes against refugees from muslim countries, not Romani, you need to update your mental hatemap.
There is also a lot of gaslighting about racism in Europe. "We don't see color," type shit
Racism in Europe isn't based on skin colour, it's based on older, more weird stereotypes and history. There is no direct "white skin - not white skin" axis that US is known for, so technically we don't see colours, we see light reflecting properties unachievable for an American
As an American the most openly racist thing I've experienced in person is someone from Europe talking about the Roma. I think we just talk about racism more.
Europeans who are racist (especially from the east, or countries which didn't have colonies) are racist in the sense of staring at black people and trying to touch their hair.
Americans who are racist are racist in the sense they want to disenfranchise black votes, gerrymandered the hell of their districts and maybe enslave them in a federal prison for a minor drug offense. Because lynching is frowned upon these days.
Both exist, but they are not the same.
You're very blatantly underestimating the extent of European racism just because it shows itself less towards black people specifically.
Europeans will also be like British people treating Polish people like shit, or various flavours of white people from adjacent communities deciding the other white person needs to be struck from the earth.
Europeans can absolutely be violently racist. I mean, who do you think sold all those slaves to the US?
yeah exactly, we don't need someone to have a different skin colour to be racist, that's a simple man's racism. us europeans only do the finest of racisms - normal people with normal white skin (my village) vs the weird people with a similar skin but their accents are kinda weird and scary (all the other villages, and especially that one village over there)
(huge /j in case that wasn't obvious)
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