Hi there, first I hope I don’t offend anyone since this is not meant to be a bash on anyone and it’s just reflecting my personal feelings. But I assume I will get attacked anyways.
So I’m a 21 year old from Germany and we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here but the few I know who also grew up here are just like any other German and talk/behave the exact same way as every other German and also seem to be perceived like a normal German. Maybe some people might naturally be kinda surprised by people having darker skin since it’s more rare but I feel like people just perceive the different skin shade the same way they perceive different hair and eye color.
But from America I noticed that many people constantly call them “black” or “white” people and make a big thing about it as if they were a different race (and of course we scientifically know that there’s only one human race). And it seems like many Americans identify with that so much that they separated and developed different cultures, behavior and way of talking solely based on their skin shade even though they’re born and raised in the same country.
I know that there was slavery and segregation in America based on exactly this in the past but this is over and we’re living in 2025 now which is why I wonder if this is still appropriate and contemporary.
Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times and it makes me feel very uncomfortable every time I hear this “black” and “white” stuff which is becoming constant since American media is everywhere. And I feel like this is also influencing people overseas like here where especially younger people in cities adopt this American mindset and I’ve even seen some using the N-Word etc.
When I grew up I never even had a concept of “different skin colors” because it just felt normal that people naturally look different and I still think like this about people and see it the same way as people having different hair and eye color but I can tell that these racist ideologies are doing something to me.
I watched a TV show called ‘Justified: City Primeval’ - it’s not very good, but something I found weird was how often the characters mentioned each other’s race I’m from the UK, so maybe it was just badly written, or maybe Americans do actually talk like that.
Scientifically race does exist in the sense that humans with certain genotypes can present certain phenotypes but we are all the same species. I don’t think you can really quantify it at the individual human level though without ending up with all this old fashioned racist concepts coming into play, i.e. someone with 1/8 asian hertiage is “still asian” or whatever.
Race seems to be a bigger deal in the states because it is more politicised in terms of voting blocs. That’s not to say we are immune to it in Europe like people with south asian heritage often vote for particular candidates in the UK for example.
I think one major factor in perceived differences is that our larger cities in Europe tend to be more genuine melting pots with fewer segregated areas. There are probably other reasons like having a stronger sense of civil society too.
tl;dr: race is real in a fuzzy sense but not particularly important. Europe has a different culture to the USA in some key senses.
There’s already a better word to describe genetic clusters - ethnicity/ethnic group, which is a real scientific concept defined by shared genealogy. Race has pretty much always been defined by someone’s sociopolitical relationship with the British upper class, and has changed over time to accommodate varying definitions of, ex. “white”.
I suppose my point was that phenotypes are real regardless of what you call them. Totally agree that the normative sense of the word “race” is a social construct.
White Americans feel about black people and other minorities roughly how Germans feel about Muslims. And I have to say, Germans do not like Muslims.
The Germans refuse to admit they’re treating Muslims the way they used to treat the Jews.
I guess Germans feel about Muslims the same way that Muslims feel about homosexuals or atheists.
*Extremist Muslims.
Yanno, like extremist Christians.
In how many Christian countries can you get executed for being gay?
Uganda.
There are 6 Muslim countries that have clear laws that state gay men should be executed, but only 3 have actually done so (including Saudi Arabia, of course, because fuck Saudi Arabia in general).
Mention of religion is also very uncommon in Germany. If someone isn’t wearing something like a cross chain, a kippa or a hijab, their religion often goes completely unnoticed in daily German life. It’s mostly irrelevant and ppl only discover it, if someone asks for halal/kosher options at a restaurant or so.
Are you sure? Because to my knowledge most Muslims in Germany are Middle Eastern and therefore quite easy to distinguish from the white Germans around them.
FWIW, there’s plenty of people with a similar colour skin who aren’t Muslim. India, for example, has a population of nearly 1.5 billion.
Unless someone tells you, or has some obvious sign, it’s bad form to assume someone’s religion from how they look.
Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and people from Afghanistan look the same as many Indians and most are absolutely Muslim.
That’s my point - you can’t tell someone’s religion just by skin colour.
Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times
Yes. American culture is very much based on social hierarchies, and slavery created a very easy, color-coded social hierarchy. So it’s hard to get rid of because a lot of people are invested in it - whether they admit it or not.
Americans (except for the most liberal) tend to look at race as a biological reality and regard anyone saying race isn’t science as woke extremism. Generally when science conflicts with common/traditional sense in America, common sense wins. The only reason quantum physics isn’t banned from schools yet is because probably only about 10% of Americans know the first thing about quantum physics.
Americans also regard a wide variety of racial discrimination - such as in dating (including who you allow your kids to date), or where you live, or where you send your kids to school, as “not racist”. This is considered not racist because the goal isn’t to harm racial minorities, but rather you’re just doing it to protect your place in the social hierarchy. The race-based social hierarchy. And if this harms minorities, well it’s not like it’s your fault right?
And if you dare try to suggest that the above is racist, people will get very angry at you and do things like elect Trump.
So yeah, racism is still very prevalent in the US.
I know that there was slavery and segregation in America based on exactly this in the past but this is over
It is not…
There’s still a lot of racial bias in housing, even by name before the landlord/realtor meets the potential client.
its just not done with the explicit approval of the government, however that is unfortunately likely to change soon.
Even after the civil rights movement, all the Republicans and a lot of the Dems opposed integration. And we’re still paying for it.
America is still very much racist. The Trump regime is particularly racist. They seek to codify their unspoken biases.
racism is an accepted reality in the US. racism is a denied reality in Europe.
This is a major oversimplification.
Americans made a huge mistake tying race to identity so hard and it’s incredibly cringy from outsiders pov. Europe is taking more of a colorblind approach and while it still needs a lot of work it’s much more sustainable and really the only viable path forward. World where race == identity will never be sustainable.
go to one soccer (football) game.
“colorblind” lmfao, that’s rich
Way to cherry pick one variable and miss the point entirely lmfao
am i really cherry picking if overt racism is a mainstay at your sports events?
Pretending to be colorblind doesn’t make one colorblind. Americans have largely adopted an ideology of anti-racism. That is, acknowledge that racial biases exist and keep the door open for healthy conversations. You may try to ignore the fact that racial biases exist but doing so only perpetuates them.
We can disagree here. I’m convicned that colorblindness is the only way to approach this and we can see in practice that American approach doesn’t work with your government throwing nazi salutes and banning words and constant race war looming over the entire country.
Maybe if you took the colorblind route you wouldn’t be where you are right now.
The colorblind route is how we got here. It has allowed white supremacists to operate under our noses while the people pretending to be colorblind give them the benefit of the doubt when they do their racist dog whistles. You see it even now with some of my countrymen trying to say Elon is just being autistic when he throws out a Nazi salute. We’ve been taking the colorblind route for decades and the only way we’ve been able to fight back is to listen to the minorities that are here and build our communities around celebration of our differences. I’m not going to treat everyone the same because the reality is that we are not all the same. Everyone has their own quirks and experiences and neuroses. I treat everyone how they want to be treated because that is how I respect their individuality. Everyone has the potential to teach me important things I don’t know.
the colorblind route js how we got here.
Umm big doubt on that my dude. US ties identity to race so hard that colorblindness is not even a term in your social dictionary and thats why you’re all so mad when people call you out cause you simple don’t even understand what a colorblind mentality is.
The definition of color blindness I’m using is ignoring race and treating everyone the same in spite of it. If you’re using a different definition, tell me what it is and I can engage you based on that. If you’re just going to be condescending to me, I might as well just not engage with you at all.
Thats fair, have a good day then 👋
My balls, you fucking eurotard. Saying that Europe isn’t racist is like saying the sky is green.
am I the only one…
No, you never are.
It happened for so long, at all levels of society, that it is still affecting us today. It has shaped the cities we currently live in. It has shaped our language. It has shaped our laws.
The first girl Black girl to go to a school that was all white is only 71 years old. And that was barely the start of the end of segregation.
A bad example, because I’m only American, but anyone in the European Union could move anywhere in the European Union. Some places just have depressing weather, or are very isolated. But it would still take a great effort for the people who even want to move to actually move.
Americans are racist, and dumb. One plays into the other, and the politicians like it this way because its easy to manipulate.
Does America have racists and dumb people within its borders? Absolutely. What country doesn’t?
Is America the most racist country? Absolutely not. Is it the dumbest country? Also no.
Nowhere is perfect. Despite all its flaws America is still the number 1 immigration destination so clearly we must be doing something right.
Got a feeling that number 1 spot ain’t lasting much longer, bud. Look at who won. I’d say we’re plenty racist and stupid to let grifters pick our pockets when they promise to kick out all the brown people. Like I said, downvote me. It doesnt make it not true.
Number 2 spot is Germany. All of the immigrants they have ever had would need to double while not a single soul immigrated into the US for the next ~30 years.
That may be true but we are still going down because people wanted deportations and cheap eggs. Thats the truth, we chose fascism so we could deport immigrants.
*illegal immigrants.
We still have many immigrants coming into the country legally every day.
Just illegals? Are you sure about that? Really sure?
Thank goodness Germany has resolved racism. I’m glad the AfD has thoroughly reformed itself. No wonder they’re getting more votes these days.
I can be downvoted to oblivion, doesnt make it not true. I didn’t say Germany was perfect. I said America wasn’t.
Back in the 90s the focus was to be colorblind, ie to treat everyone the same. Now people are focusing on race again in a big way. It boggles my mind that people now think treating people differently based on race is somehow a good thing. That people should get preferential hiring based on race is probably the biggest WTF.
I feel like it started getting worse from 2016 on and since 2020 the world has become so weird
Pretending to be colorblind hurts non-white people more than not.
So, good for you, but the particular dynamics of being a colonial country that had a massive portion of its economy based on race-based slavery has resulted in an approach to diversity that has much deeper roots and has been wrestling with hard issues for much longer than Germany has, and Germany’s own record with dealing with identifiable minorities in the last hundred years has, shall we say, not always been great.
Many European countries are only now hitting levels of diversity America had fifty years ago, and America has been made of statistically significant communities with distinctive origins for hundreds of years, and this in a colonizing country where there is no historically continuous monoculture. Historically, people tend to become dicks to the “Other” among them when faced with hardship, and much of American history reflects that sort of thing, but also its aftermath and attempts to heal.
Diverse and defiantly distinctive communities formed and persisted because that was how people got by and found support and could make their way, admittedly often because opportunities to assimilate, into whatever soup of dimly remembered pan-European customs that passes for a privileged culture here, were intentionally blocked. Yet even if the reasons for them are shameful, they are real and important, and the American dialogue on race simply cannot be color-blind even when well-meaning. Instead, it has to be a dance, where people of goodwill celebrate both differences and similarities and do not set groups above one another but also do not pretend they don’t exist.
I wish more Americans would understand that our approach rarely translates well, and for fuck’s sake I wish we had fewer people who were stuck in the bad old days where reconciliation and healing were very much not priorities. That said, I also wish that people from countries with a very different cultural and historical experience would not assume that their countries have shit figured out, when a lot of it simply boils down to “we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here.”
I think it’s very important to face the issue and not be blind about it. But it should be faced by acknowledging “we separate people based on their skin shade and we should give efforts to stop doing that”.
Because I think it’s pretty much self-explanatory that separation on purely ethnicity/looks is not constructive where people are artificially treated as if they were different even though they’re not. I think the damage clearly outweighs here.
Justifying racism by saying ‘this is what we always did and it worked like that’ is not the right way forward imo as we can’t be stuck in the past and make the same mistakes that could be successfully improved.
Of course this can’t be changed overnight but I think it’s important to start somewhere as I think no one wants to live in such unfair system like this. I haven’t said other countries aren’t affected by this but at least here in Germany it feels like it’s not being done to the extent like in America based on any purely ethnicity difference like skin, eye or hair appearance.
Because I think it’s pretty much self-explanatory that separation on purely ethnicity/looks is not constructive where people are artificially treated as if they were different even though they’re not. I think the damage clearly outweighs here.
Justifying racism by saying ‘this is what we always did and it worked like that’ is not the right way forward imo as we can’t be stuck in the past and make the same mistakes that could be successfully improved.
What I’m trying to get at is that while appearance is not any kind of enlightened reason for distinct communities to have arisen, through accidents of history and genetics they did, and they are still relevant and appreciated by the people who are part of them. The color terminology is shorthand that acknowledges history. It’s not “justifying racism” to accept that in many places your ethnic background, especially if visible, means that certain experiences will have been more or less common for you. You can engage in this, even light heartedly, in good faith and as a way to understand your neighbors better, and indeed to think of them as your friends and neighbors instead of “Other.” People who are trying to do right by their fellow Americans are not using it to “separate,” but acknowledging that separation gave rise to proud, distinct communities and there’s no value in snuffing that out. The dialogue can be a way to unite us.
I believe we can agree that using visible “racial” markers to treat someone as less valuable than someone else is disturbing and evil, and still sadly common. I’m just saying that it’s not the mere use of the terms, or creating media that acknowledges them that results in the continuation of racism. Hell, in some ways, refusing to acknowledge differences gives a person with bad intent the license to settle on a single definition of what it means to be a “proper” American and to decide that anyone who doesn’t act the right way is less valuable: “I didn’t refuse to hire him because he’s black, but because he dresses and speaks differently. All he has to do is be exactly like me and I’d be more than happy to hire him!” (coughJDVancecoughcough)
Kid, you are nothing short of adorable.
How long were the Nazis in power in Germany? About ten years, fifteen? 1930’s to the Mid-1940’s? During how much of that time were Jews discriminated against, subjugated and slaughtered? Even if it started on day one, fifteen years is a fraction of one human lifetime. How would you describe the relationship between ethnic Germans and Jews today, given that little incident 80 years ago? Any grudges or awkwardness there?
Now I want you to imagine it was allowed to go on for a century, followed by another century of “the law says we’re merely allowed to treat you as a second-class citizen now, so get to the back of the fucking bus.”
Segregation in the United States lasted long enough for separate dialects of English to form. Turns out that wounds that took generations to carve are taking generations to heal. Imagine that for a moment.
I think I have to point out, that the Nazis weren’t the only ones discriminating against and slaughtering Jews in Europe. There’s a long history of that, going back centuries. Ever heard of the cruscades for example? They didn’t limit themselves to killing non-Christian only in the holy lands. The Nazis were just the ones who did the killings on an industrial scale. But their reasoning for doing it goes way, way back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews
This doesn’t excuse anything the Nazis did, or any form of discrimination, but I just feel it’s very dishonest to limit our view of anti-semitism in Germany (and Europe in general) to a fifteen year period, when it’s definitely been there a lot longer.
The Jews have been discriminated against and slaughtered for CENTURIES. Herr Hitler was just one of the many, many leaders who committed genocide. They’ve been segregated since forever. This wasn’t just 15-year booboo.
And don’t get me started on Leopold II and the Dutch and British empires.
Segregation in the United States lasted long enough for separate dialects of English to form.
dude, european jews were segregated so long that new languages formed
If you ever see little kids with different skin tones playing together, they are clearly not bothered by skin color, and it has no bearing on their play. The racism in America is completely learned. It is not natural. Sometimes consciously, but many times unconsciously.
Loosely similar is how men in most places are fine walking around alone at night. While women consciously try to move in groups, even during the daytime. Many men have no idea how different it is for many women.
They aren’t bothered by it. But they’ll also still say “the dark girl”, with no malice of course.
Skin color, hair color, height, weight. These are all easy to see and use to identify people when we don’t know names.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “the black guy” if you don’t know Steve yet. I guess you could also say “the darker hair individual, maybe a 4c”.
So I’m a 21 year old from Germany
When, as a people, or a nation do unprecedented crimes and evil, it rings out through history, carried by the parents and given to the children. Racism is still a topic for discussion because it’s still a problem. I’m sure you understand.
I’m sure you understand
Idk I spent a few years in Europe and, to be honest, I don’t think so. You ask a European about gypsies or Muslim immigrants and all of a sudden they’re mask off. But “it’s different” so it’s okay
Because Americans conflate this with race when it’s not the skin color that causes pain for Europeans but the cultural aspects. Clearly Islam and gypsy cultures are much more than race right?
“okay we’re not racist, were just discriminate on other things”
Nah it’s perfectly fine to dislike some cultural traits and actions. That’s the key difference where Europeans try to control actions and Americans try to control the entire race as if it’s some homogeneous unit, as if black people in Louisiana are suffering the same issues black people in LA are. Its just stupid. Colorblind is the way.
