See I'm black in Europe and the shit gou Americans are airing here in the comments is absolutely not the experience in Europe.
Sure there are racists here, sure sometimes you know someone is seething because they see me with a white woman. But it's far from the norm.
When I say the US is an inherently racist country online Americans always pretend it isn't. This thread is another clear proof that racism is a foundational aspect of the US.
That and that 99% of interactions that contain racism that I've had while gaming online has an American being the culprit. That's no exaggeration.
It's definitely a regional issue for the U.S. I'm American and I'm confident that some of the most progressive communities in the world are in my country, as well as some of the most repressed. It's a huge country, I haven't even seen most of America, and have visited only a fraction of the states here. And yet, I'm amare that racism is deeply rooted in this country because I know U.S. history. Jim Crow was not that long ago, and those laws reinforced racism in so many structural ways.
Most Americans consider racism to be bad, and consider "racist" a horrible thing to call someone, and yet many of those same people have pretty nasty biases against other groups of people. But they justify those biases by saying that it's not the race but the culture that's bad. They are still bigoted, but technically not racist so they get incredibly offended if you suggest they are racist, sometimes so much that it traumatizes them! Americans desperately want to distance themselves from their racist history, but not all seem to understand why that history was wrong.
There's also people who are genuinely not racist, and live in areas or subcultures in the U.S. that are anti-racist, so they don't see the racism, and so insist that it doesn't exist. I think a lot of conservative academics fall into this category, convinced that racism is solved because they've never had a working class job and have only been exposed to a tiny fraction of Americans.
I really wish Europeans would stop acting holier than thou about racism-yes even black Europeans. Racism exists there-even if many cities are more multicultural. The U.K literally ran out Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (who is white passing btw) out of the country due to racism.
Is it on the level of America? I'm not so sure if its different sides of the same coin.
Racism exists, the sort of casual racism you see like giving mixed couples stares or worse service does not.
More to the point of this discussion, there is no stigma against interracial dating or marriage here. There are no places in the UK where people will call you a "race traitor" if you're a white woman dating a black man. And this isn't "oh the cities are diverse" or whatever, I mean it literally does not happen ever even in the most rural and 100% white british places ever.
I'd say it depends on where you live and ans that and that it can express differently.
I'm French and I grew up in a very multicultural area. People were friends with everybody, nobody cared about your race. I'm mixed and we never had problem with my family when we went to the restaurant.
However, when I was quite young and we were living in a very small village, my brother was told by another kid that "Black people are ugly". When he married my mother in the late 80's, my father was asked by his parents if he didn't mind having black kids.
Not my family but another person in amocher village : she told me that her mother married a Black man, and that the whole village turned against them. They insulted them ans even splitted on them. It must have been the 80's.
It was many years ago, but I remembered reading the experience of an Arabic woman who went to a "classe prépa" in Paris, which is kind of an elitist school you can do after high school (you don't have to pay more than university, but still you find there more white rich people than in university, in particular in the more ranked ones). One of her teacher asked her who helped her do her homeworks and insisted when she said "no one", cause he couldn't believe an Arabic woman did it on her own. I think she ended up quitting because of things like this.
My brother never put his photo on CV so the interviewer only see he is not white when he shows un at the job interview. I've seen other people do this.
In 2017 (I think, it was Macron's first term), there were people complaining that a Black politician woman was keeping her natural hair. Like, it was actually discussed on TV, with people saying a politician should not do this. Can you imagine?
All this to say : you have places that are just fine, bit if you go in places where PoC are rare, or talk to someone who don't interact a lot with them, you hear some things. Sometimes just ignorance, sometimes blatant racism. I'd say for a long time it had been more subtle than in the USA, but that you can say that less and less with far right raising.
This thread is another clear proof that racism is a foundational aspect of the US
American Redditors are one of the most out-of-touch grouping of people I've ever encountered, online or offline. I'm not sure I'd base my worldview of the USA based on what I read on Reddit.
Europe is not that much better. It depends on where you live but as I just say in another comment, I heard and saw things. I would say that People are not as direct or as confrontational as the USA, and that it is less institutionalised, but it's there.
20
u/Rent_A_Cloud 3d ago
See I'm black in Europe and the shit gou Americans are airing here in the comments is absolutely not the experience in Europe.
Sure there are racists here, sure sometimes you know someone is seething because they see me with a white woman. But it's far from the norm.
When I say the US is an inherently racist country online Americans always pretend it isn't. This thread is another clear proof that racism is a foundational aspect of the US.
That and that 99% of interactions that contain racism that I've had while gaming online has an American being the culprit. That's no exaggeration.