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 .
Probably something like «rohadt cigány» if it’s anything close to the kurwas in Hungary.
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.
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.
Yeah that’s called hate
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.
That would be Speciesism just to be pedantic. But no, it really doesn’t and shows a poor understanding of the historical background of “zwarte Piet”.
Zwarte Piet is 100% a slave with all the traditional symbolism around the character. The fact that people call their role ‘helper’ or ‘assistant’ really does not change anything about the historical background of “zwarte Piet”
We are basically portraying a white man with black slaves as a great thing, and celebrate it. Combine that with the fact that it’s mainly directed at kids who are very easily influenced in such regards… It’s a bad tradition.
I know that for 99% of the people this probably isn’t the message they want to send, but even when not malicious it will influence the way children look at the world.
When people of color make up more than 0.02% of the population, we’ll be glad to see those humanistic policies and programs upheld.
That figure for France is approx 500-1000 times higher than your bullshit made up number ;)
Even higher including overseas territories
Colonial invasion is not the defense you think it is.
I’m not endorsing France holding onto Guyana et al. Just pointing out that the figure is that high even just in the mainland.
Colour of skin =/= race.
I’ll give you a pass because you’re usanian and you guys exist in a bastardized version of civilised society.
Race isn’t even real. Science stops before then, and maybe you can get vague ethnic groups that can be mostly self defined.
We all live in bastardized and fragile versions of “civility”. None of them are perfect, some of them are worse, and the usa is a big place, please don’t generalize and group us all together.
Pretending your civilization is superior is… Probably something you should be cautious of.
Yeah. It’s just that we have the history and problems (and some solutions) you don’t. It’s not necessarily because you’re better people, is it.
So you’re enjoying not having to deal with either. You think it’s pretty great. There are a bunch of racists here who 100% agree.
Oh ffs, we border Africa and Asia you absolute moppet. There are far greater divisions within Europe than skin colour. France has battled England for longer than the US has existed. Denmark still has a law that allows the Danes to clobber Swedes crossing a frozen Öresund. Half of Europe was once ruled by an inbred caste of Austrians. While all of this happening, there were other races around and the peoples had commercial and social relationships. Almost the entirety of the Iberian peninsula was at some point populated by North Africans and the Roman empire was once divided between East and West.
Nobody thinks we’re better people, it’s just that the entire globe agrees you’re not good people and are educated to have the miopic view typical of a place that thinks they are better than everyone else while conveniently ignoring they’re living on stolen land from a wealth of genocided native peoples.
Wow you border areas very different from you? That’s gotta be a great source of societal change huh.
Not sure how “we’ve hated each other for stupider reasons for hundreds of years” is your lede but, write what you know, they say.
Nobody thinks we’re better people, it’s just that the entire globe agrees you’re not good people and are educated to have the miopic view typical of a place that thinks they are better than everyone else while conveniently ignoring they’re living on stolen land from a wealth of genocided native peoples.
*myopic*. So true about the stolen land. Irrelevant to the discussion but true. Hey I heard you guys literally were the Nazis, is that true?
Wow you border areas very different from you? That’s gotta be a great source of societal change huh.
Written like someone “educated” in the US. If only there was a discipline, I don’t know, like history, that taught thousands of examples of exactly that…
Hey I heard you guys literally were the Nazis, is that true?
It was also a European who killed Hitler, so it evens out at the end of the day.
It was also a European who killed Hitler, so it evens out at the end of the day.
Interesting, why aren’t there any statues of this guy, or a day in his honour? Unless there something you’re neglecting to mention lol.
Remind me, which African colonies did Americans own into the 1950s.
I can tell you which European ones existed…
also some Europeans were, and am*ricans currently are Nazis
Jolly, I can feel the americaness oozing from the screen. They say ignorance is bliss but this doesn’t seem very blissful to me.
Godspeed my USA friends and strap in - you are about find out so much in the next couple of decades.
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.
You just solved a 20 year old mystery that I didn’t even realize I was curious about. It was super weird, because these were relatively progressive, educated adults, and the audacity of the bigotry just sort of left me confused. This helps me understand a little bit better.
Before the modern internet it was really hard to fact check something. In 2001 in the eastern bloc it was still rare to have internet at home (in Poland only 10% of the population used the internet in 2001 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=PL), and English language knowledge was very low, the compulsory second language taught in schools was Russian before 1990 (this was the case in Hungary, I guess it was common in other Warsaw-pact countries).
I just looked up the snopes article now, I didn’t know the origin story an hour ago, but I suspected it was not true. If someone just heard this gossip around that time they didn’t really have an easy way to check it, and in their long term memory it was saved as fact.
If someone just heard this gossip around that time they didn’t really have an easy way to check it, and in their long term memory it was saved as fact.
And yet - *gestures to everything*
Tbf some people in Africa don’t know what racism is either. In some places white people are not that regular and some kids in the country side never even saw a white person, much less ever faced or understand the concept of racism. If you are somewhat isolated in a comunity you won’t get it until you start watching more problematic Tv or movies. Maybe that’s what this polish person said
I live in a big country, in a big city, and I don’t get why racism is even a thing, imagine being isolated!?
Of course, some people in africa experience racism from other black people. It isn’t all white v black, sometimes it’s Hutu v Tutsi.
Ethnicity is not race btw.
Let’s be real, it’s a semantic difference when we’re talking genocide.
you arr talking genocide. I was talking about Racism.
When I was a kid we had so few POC in our schools; it was simply because there weren’t many here yet. I had one black person in my grade school and three in my high school. It was just our population then, the area was mostly European immigrants back then. It has changed immensely now, and the racism against immigrants here is pretty vile.
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.
It shows itself versus everyone specifically. There is no group of people persecuted based on their race by politicians, law enforcement, media and half the population like back people are in the US. Or brown Muslims in the US. Or transgender people in the US. Maybe in Poland, this last one, but i don’t think so.
In Europe roma people are discriminated against in a worse way
Any specific examples of laws or initiatives or just the hurt durr Roma poor that was inherited from reddit?
There are no laws, but for example in Hungary romas are segregated in countryside schools
Well, that’s kind of my point. If the worst thing is what some villages in the most hostile country are doing, shows that there is no systemic/institutional racism to the extent of the US.
Oh wait Romania is worse
Also look at North Macedonia
Romani?
That’s just strictly wrong. Never ask a European about the romani
That’s just strictly wrong, a a dead horse inherited from reddit, probably even older.
It’s a joke on reddit because every time they say it a European comes out of the wood works to prove the joke true.
And you extrapolate that to an entire continent. Good job.
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)
And don’t ever mention the Romani, hoo boy.
Polish people are not a race…
No people are races. Jesus cantankering Christ. Race isn’t real, it’s pseudoscience.
Define “race” and then tell me that an anglo person is the same as an eastern European person.
This guy is Polish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Olisadebe, I can define race however you want, Polish is not a race.
I said Polish because they are the group of easter Europeans that are most readily gone after in Britain. British is also not a race, by the way.
Ya stupid.
So… It’s not racist, you say?
Nice, this post is a circlejerk of Americans being racist to Europeans without even having met one in their lives probably.
“My uncle from Boston is Irish because he’s ginger and he likes whiskey. This basically makes me better specialist in the customs of country of Europe than any of people who live there”
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.
I would wager a guess that you actually read on reddit someone experiencing that. Or someone talking about someone else experiencing that.
You would be wrong. I meet two people at college and they were both extremely hateful.
Itt:
Americans are dumb af and know it, but Europeans are dumb af and don’t know it.
OH HOW THE TURNS HAVE TABLED
Western Europe, America… everybody sucks here. Both places have positives, sure, but they also definitely have huge dark components in their pasts (and present). Most (all?) places in the world do. The difference is that Western Europe and America are the Western powers and they have more in common than they think. Both have superiority complexes that they try to excuse by pointing their fingers at each other. I’ve seen even huge “leftists” from both places fall back on some sort of superiority when they’re losing an argument or starting to feel inferior.
Americans aren’t anti-intellectual. We have a VERY high percentage that ARE.
The fascist portion of politics is staunchly anti-intellectual, but most of their supporters wouldn’t know what it looks like.
Being from Europe doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid. It’s just harder because it’s encouraged not to.
Can’t be racist if you don’t know black people exist.
Polish version of racism is against Romani people
Я думаю, поляк имел ввиду что он просто не сталкивался с расизмом в жизни, поэтому и не знал что это такое
Я думаю, что русскоговорящих на Лемми почти нет.
Edit: it’s funny how in a thread about racism, people are massively downvoting comments in a language other than English: D
Зато мне нравится какую волну комментариев я поднял 😁 Мне очень не хватает тут комментариев И стыдно признаться из всех них перевод потребовался мне почему то украинского комментария, хотя по итогу он единственный меня поддержал
Que raro, el otro comentario está en otro lenguaje también y no tiene ese problema. Será que es la asociación con ese lenguaje debido ha eventos corrientes que es el problema con el estigma del lenguaje?
otro lenguaje
Which one? You mean the Ukrainian response that got four downvotes?
Stigmatising a language, which is frequently one of crucial elements of people’s identity, is pretty fucking racist.
Será que es la asociación con ese lenguaje debido ha eventos corrientes que es el problema con el estigma del lenguaje?
Ist das wirklich lustig, auf eine ironische Art, oder vielleicht einfach nervig, weil es die meisten nicht lesen können?
It really is funny to me. Maybe annoying for others.
Let’s not pretend Google Translate isn’t a couple of taps away.
Let’s not pretend Google Translate isn’t a couple of taps away
Which only makes it weirder that the person writing didn’t do that themselves, but instead wanted everyone else to waste their time.
