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In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality. Unfortunately this export from America is s

In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality. Unfortunately this export from America is starting to take root in Europe.

Wintamute 6y ago
It's not an American import, or absurd to have an identity composed of both a nationality and ethnicity. Really, it's up to the individual - there are many 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants to the UK or Europe that value their cultural origins and ethnicities. Absolutely those people are British, but many, if not most will not wish to erase their heritage for the sake of 100% assimilation into the host culture.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  I should have expected such a reply. Your comment is exactly what I expect from white collar professional that works an office job. It is an American import and it is absurd. It also causes division. e.g Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived here their entire life to display a flag other than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a lot of guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and this sort of resentment is always hand waived away as "racism" when that isn't the problem at all. Many developers don't spend time with the lower classes / those that aren't university educated which have to deal with the worse parts of immigration. They only see the positive aspects of it. BTW the same happens with the British in the South of Spain btw. The British reputation in Spain is complete dirt because of the disrespectful party goers and expats. It is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to respect the local culture and language.
  - Wintamute 6y ago
    You presume a lot about me sir. I'm happy to engage in your ideas, but play the ball not the man. I'm actually sympathetic to your views, and feel strongly that immigrants should respect and participate in the host culture as much as possible. That requires effort on both sides, of course, and the blame doesn't always lie with the host Western culture as is often unfairly characterised. My only point was that I don't see that maintaining a link to your heritage and cultural/ethnic distinctiveness as _necessarily_ incompatible with assimilating and participating fully into the host nation and enriching it in the process. This isn't an argument for neoliberal multiculturalism by the way, which I view as mostly a policy disaster, that hurts the working classes and immigrants the most.
  - istjohn 6y ago
    This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents. Meanwhile chicken tikka masala is hailed as Britain's national dish. I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - aspnet_dev 6y ago
      > This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents. This old nonsense. This is the problem people like you will constantly bring up the past and won't let anyone forget about it. None of the people that were involved with that are alive today. Also BTW every country and people have invaded and colonised one another if you go far back enough in time. Are we going to start blaming the Italians for Caesar massacring the Celts and the Gauls? When do you want to stop? 50, 100, 500, 1000 years? > I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility When did I claim I had a problem with people having another flag up? I didn't say that. I said the labourers in the pub tend to and it has nothing to do with xenophobia (which is you basically euphemism calling them/me racist btw). If you re-read my comment I actually said that someone would just claim it was racism and not actually try to understand what the real issue is. You did exactly that and you didn't even direct it at the right person. You can never have a sensible discussion about these issues because mid-wits will scream racism almost as it were some Pavlovian reaction. BTW I am actually a xeno-phile. I actually have lived all over the globe and have only recently come back to the UK.
      - istjohn 6y ago
        Flop on the field all you want, no one called you racist. Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to identify with their own culture while also embracing a new one is aptly described as xenophobia. If you want to have a sensible discussion, lets start by engaging with what is actually said instead of what we wish was said.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar and please don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived here their entire life to display a flag other than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a lot of guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and this sort of resentment is always hand waived away as "racism" when that isn't the problem at all. No that's absolutely racism. > The British reputation in Spain is complete dirt because of the disrespectful party goers and expats. It is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to respect the local culture and language. This is also their racism. A special place is reserved for those people who post comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many immigrants there in England are when they're a British immigrant to Spain.
    - aspnet_dev 6y ago
      I never mentioned the race of the labourers. Many weren't white btw. But from your comments you are assuming they are. That btw is racism. > No that's absolutely racism. Why? Care to explain? I never mentioned the race many weren't white btw that were making a similar complaint. > This is also their racism. So Spanish people who are basically white are being racist against other white people? Is that what you mean? That isn't racism. Or British (not all British people are white) are people being racist against Spanish people? Or are you using Hitler's definition of what "white" is which means Northern European. Either way this is non-sensical. > A special place is reserved for those people who post comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many immigrants there in England are when they're a British immigrant to Spain. What are you on about? Nobody said anything about that. I said there are people in Spain that are English that don't assimilate with the local population which is Spanish.
- Shorel 6y ago
  Their heritage has already been erased except for the genetic record and one or two holidays a year.
pjc50 6y ago
That sounds great, but in practice doesn't prevent people from receiving racial abuse or discrimination because of what it says in their passport. There's definitely a faction of people who think that if you're not white you're not British, regardless of what it says in your passport. And the Shamina Begum case proves that there's some support for this: the government can simply remove your British nationality if you're Bangladeshi despite her being born in London.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring up. She gave it up there and then. It not like she hooked up with some bad lads and got into a bit of hijinks. The faction of people that don't believe you are British if you aren't white has to be minority of people. Most of the people that may have brought up the subject are in their Winter years now. Pretending that Enoch Powell is still popular is a nonsense and tbh is nothing more than virtue signalling IME.
  - splintercell 6y ago
    > She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring up. She's the perfect example. If a full on British person like Nigel Farage does a heinous crime (or make it apples to apples, he joins ISIS) would they take his citizenship away? If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable.
    - aspnet_dev 6y ago
      I would hope they would take his citizenship away. I don't want a ISIS member coming back to the UK. The case went through all the legal proceeding and she is not allowed back in the UK. Good! > If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable. If they were born in the US, they would have just been assassinated by drone strike instead like they did with Anwar al-Awlaki.
      - arwineap 6y ago
        ISIS is bad, no one is denying this The citizenship concept is a requirement for modern life. If a person has their citizenship revoked, what are they to do? They are illegal where they are, and they are illegal where they go. To my knowledge, there's no processes in any country for becoming a citizen without a preexisting citizenship from another country. Back to this specific example, if she had wanted to come back and denounce ISIS; what should the UK offer her? What about if she wanted to come back and face trial; what should the UK offer her? In the end, just to point out the obvious, revoking citizenship is completely unneeded. If she comes back, charge her with her crimes. If she travels, extradite her. If she stays, let the leopards eat her face.
eurocent 6y ago
The very concept of nation is quite euro-centric though. Most of the rest of the world definitely thinks in terms of ethnic and racial groups, and has done so for thousands of years.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  I am in the UK, which geographically is part of Europe. That not how we think here and that is a good thing. I don't want our politics to become racialised like it is everywhere else. All it seems to do is bring division and hatred and unfortunately it has imported from America.
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    Where do you live in the UK where you don’t think our politics is radicalized? It’s nit as bad as the US but Brexit is a thing ...
  - KittenInABox 6y ago
    The Troubles are within living memory in the UK and still have semi-regular terrorist attacks from it though, so I really am skeptical of this idea.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    If people don't want politics to be racialised, they need to get better at shutting down the blatent racism of the press, police, and major political parties. Some of it is imported, but the UK is quite capable of its own characteristically British racism, most recently directed against Poles and Romanians.
- nicky0 6y ago
  It may be a European concept but the concept of a nation state is a good one. When it works, it unites everyone as one group. Humans have a psycholical need for a group identity. Better to unite diverse individuals behind a flag, than to form groups based on ethnicity.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality. Tell that to the Balkans.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  There is always a smartass isn't there? You know very well that I was generalising and obviously it will vary by region due to historical reasons.
  - is-ought 6y ago
    And also because you're wrong.
    - aspnet_dev 6y ago
      Or is Emmanuel Macron also wrong when he also said (and I am paraphrasing) "They are Frenchmen" when an American Talk show host said that Black people won the World cup for France? In our secular societies you are what your nationality is and your race is irrelevant (or should be considered to be) in the eyes of the state and in the UK it is considered rude to bring up someone's race (other than identifying them). I will accept that we aren't perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. Bringing up areas of Europe which I obviously wasn't referring to and have been politically unstable for decades now is disingenuous and simply missing the overall point to be a smartass.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The Balkans are but one recent example. European history is littered with "you might live in the same place and speak the same language but you're not like me because a couple hundred years ago your people were from X". Europe has the same problems the US does just spread across fewer skin tones.
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
In Europe, France and Romania are different countries, so you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France. "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but also about a shared history, migration path, acculturation, and regional population concentration. It's as much a valid "sub-nationality" of American as "Midwestern" or "Californian". Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If we didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from each-other, it would be like Europeans having no term to distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  > In Europe, France and Romania are different countries, so you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France. I never claimed there were Romanians Europeans living in France. I claimed that if you were happened to be Black and British you were still seen as simply British (until relatively recently). The same is generally true in other parts of Northern Europe as well, I have discussed this with Belgians, Germans and Frenchmen online and they all tell me similar things. I am complaining that this nonsense of saying you are a White <Nationality> or a Chinese <Nationality> or Black <Nationality> idea has been imported from America. It doesn't make sense here. > "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but also about a shared history, migration path, acculturation, and regional population concentration. It's as much a valid "sub-nationality" of American as "Midwestern" or "Californian". I don't care what they do in the USA. That is their business. It isn't a thing here and it shouldn't be. Just because we speak English in the UK, doesn't mean we are like Americans. > Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If we didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from each-other, it would be like Europeans having no term to distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard. I understand this and never claimed the opposite.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France Thanks to EU freedom of movement, that is absolutely what you do have.
- ric2b 6y ago
  I'm sorry but I still don't get it. Why is referring to people by their state not enough? It's more or less equivalent to nationality in Europe. Why is race necessary or useful in the same way?
einpoklum 6y ago
> In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. Yes, but > You are your nationality. Only if you're a nationalist. Many believe in cross-national or non-national collective identities, e.g. the identity of being a wage worker. In other cases - it's groups oppressed by the state. The Catalan and Basque come to mind; and there are the Roma ("gypsies"), who are not territorially-defined. etc.
- aspnet_dev 6y ago
  > Only if you're a nationalist. Nope. That is how the law and the state sees it.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    So, if I live in a monarchy, and the law and the state see my identity as a loyal subject of our glorious king, then that's what I should believe?
oaiey 6y ago
Wait a second. In Germany we had work related immigrants (dominantly Turkish) in the 60s. The descendants (2/3/4 generation) of these immigrants are still classified as such (and share attributes about the black community in the US). I do not remember a proper title ... but that is just my brain right now.

In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality. Unfortunately this export from America is starting to take root in Europe.

Wintamute 6y ago

It's not an American import, or absurd to have an identity composed of both a nationality and ethnicity. Really, it's up to the individual - there are many 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants to the UK or Europe that value their cultural origins and ethnicities. Absolutely those people are British, but many, if not most will not wish to erase their heritage for the sake of 100% assimilation into the host culture.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
I should have expected such a reply. Your comment is exactly what I expect from white collar professional that works an office job. It is an American import and it is absurd. It also causes division. e.g Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived here their entire life to display a flag other than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a lot of guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and this sort of resentment is always hand waived away as "racism" when that isn't the problem at all. Many developers don't spend time with the lower classes / those that aren't university educated which have to deal with the worse parts of immigration. They only see the positive aspects of it. BTW the same happens with the British in the South of Spain btw. The British reputation in Spain is complete dirt because of the disrespectful party goers and expats. It is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to respect the local culture and language.
- Wintamute 6y ago
  You presume a lot about me sir. I'm happy to engage in your ideas, but play the ball not the man. I'm actually sympathetic to your views, and feel strongly that immigrants should respect and participate in the host culture as much as possible. That requires effort on both sides, of course, and the blame doesn't always lie with the host Western culture as is often unfairly characterised. My only point was that I don't see that maintaining a link to your heritage and cultural/ethnic distinctiveness as _necessarily_ incompatible with assimilating and participating fully into the host nation and enriching it in the process. This isn't an argument for neoliberal multiculturalism by the way, which I view as mostly a policy disaster, that hurts the working classes and immigrants the most.
- istjohn 6y ago
  This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents. Meanwhile chicken tikka masala is hailed as Britain's national dish. I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - aspnet_dev 6y ago
    > This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents. This old nonsense. This is the problem people like you will constantly bring up the past and won't let anyone forget about it. None of the people that were involved with that are alive today. Also BTW every country and people have invaded and colonised one another if you go far back enough in time. Are we going to start blaming the Italians for Caesar massacring the Celts and the Gauls? When do you want to stop? 50, 100, 500, 1000 years? > I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility When did I claim I had a problem with people having another flag up? I didn't say that. I said the labourers in the pub tend to and it has nothing to do with xenophobia (which is you basically euphemism calling them/me racist btw). If you re-read my comment I actually said that someone would just claim it was racism and not actually try to understand what the real issue is. You did exactly that and you didn't even direct it at the right person. You can never have a sensible discussion about these issues because mid-wits will scream racism almost as it were some Pavlovian reaction. BTW I am actually a xeno-phile. I actually have lived all over the globe and have only recently come back to the UK.
    - istjohn 6y ago
      Flop on the field all you want, no one called you racist. Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to identify with their own culture while also embracing a new one is aptly described as xenophobia. If you want to have a sensible discussion, lets start by engaging with what is actually said instead of what we wish was said.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar and please don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pjc50 6y ago
  > Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived here their entire life to display a flag other than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a lot of guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and this sort of resentment is always hand waived away as "racism" when that isn't the problem at all. No that's absolutely racism. > The British reputation in Spain is complete dirt because of the disrespectful party goers and expats. It is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to respect the local culture and language. This is also their racism. A special place is reserved for those people who post comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many immigrants there in England are when they're a British immigrant to Spain.
  - aspnet_dev 6y ago
    I never mentioned the race of the labourers. Many weren't white btw. But from your comments you are assuming they are. That btw is racism. > No that's absolutely racism. Why? Care to explain? I never mentioned the race many weren't white btw that were making a similar complaint. > This is also their racism. So Spanish people who are basically white are being racist against other white people? Is that what you mean? That isn't racism. Or British (not all British people are white) are people being racist against Spanish people? Or are you using Hitler's definition of what "white" is which means Northern European. Either way this is non-sensical. > A special place is reserved for those people who post comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many immigrants there in England are when they're a British immigrant to Spain. What are you on about? Nobody said anything about that. I said there are people in Spain that are English that don't assimilate with the local population which is Spanish.
Shorel 6y ago
Their heritage has already been erased except for the genetic record and one or two holidays a year.

pjc50 6y ago

That sounds great, but in practice doesn't prevent people from receiving racial abuse or discrimination because of what it says in their passport. There's definitely a faction of people who think that if you're not white you're not British, regardless of what it says in your passport. And the Shamina Begum case proves that there's some support for this: the government can simply remove your British nationality if you're Bangladeshi despite her being born in London.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring up. She gave it up there and then. It not like she hooked up with some bad lads and got into a bit of hijinks. The faction of people that don't believe you are British if you aren't white has to be minority of people. Most of the people that may have brought up the subject are in their Winter years now. Pretending that Enoch Powell is still popular is a nonsense and tbh is nothing more than virtue signalling IME.
- splintercell 6y ago
  > She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring up. She's the perfect example. If a full on British person like Nigel Farage does a heinous crime (or make it apples to apples, he joins ISIS) would they take his citizenship away? If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable.
  - aspnet_dev 6y ago
    I would hope they would take his citizenship away. I don't want a ISIS member coming back to the UK. The case went through all the legal proceeding and she is not allowed back in the UK. Good! > If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable. If they were born in the US, they would have just been assassinated by drone strike instead like they did with Anwar al-Awlaki.
    - arwineap 6y ago
      ISIS is bad, no one is denying this The citizenship concept is a requirement for modern life. If a person has their citizenship revoked, what are they to do? They are illegal where they are, and they are illegal where they go. To my knowledge, there's no processes in any country for becoming a citizen without a preexisting citizenship from another country. Back to this specific example, if she had wanted to come back and denounce ISIS; what should the UK offer her? What about if she wanted to come back and face trial; what should the UK offer her? In the end, just to point out the obvious, revoking citizenship is completely unneeded. If she comes back, charge her with her crimes. If she travels, extradite her. If she stays, let the leopards eat her face.

eurocent 6y ago

The very concept of nation is quite euro-centric though. Most of the rest of the world definitely thinks in terms of ethnic and racial groups, and has done so for thousands of years.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
I am in the UK, which geographically is part of Europe. That not how we think here and that is a good thing. I don't want our politics to become racialised like it is everywhere else. All it seems to do is bring division and hatred and unfortunately it has imported from America.
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  Where do you live in the UK where you don’t think our politics is radicalized? It’s nit as bad as the US but Brexit is a thing ...
- KittenInABox 6y ago
  The Troubles are within living memory in the UK and still have semi-regular terrorist attacks from it though, so I really am skeptical of this idea.
- pjc50 6y ago
  If people don't want politics to be racialised, they need to get better at shutting down the blatent racism of the press, police, and major political parties. Some of it is imported, but the UK is quite capable of its own characteristically British racism, most recently directed against Poles and Romanians.
nicky0 6y ago
It may be a European concept but the concept of a nation state is a good one. When it works, it unites everyone as one group. Humans have a psycholical need for a group identity. Better to unite diverse individuals behind a flag, than to form groups based on ethnicity.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality. Tell that to the Balkans.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
There is always a smartass isn't there? You know very well that I was generalising and obviously it will vary by region due to historical reasons.
- is-ought 6y ago
  And also because you're wrong.
  - aspnet_dev 6y ago
    Or is Emmanuel Macron also wrong when he also said (and I am paraphrasing) "They are Frenchmen" when an American Talk show host said that Black people won the World cup for France? In our secular societies you are what your nationality is and your race is irrelevant (or should be considered to be) in the eyes of the state and in the UK it is considered rude to bring up someone's race (other than identifying them). I will accept that we aren't perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. Bringing up areas of Europe which I obviously wasn't referring to and have been politically unstable for decades now is disingenuous and simply missing the overall point to be a smartass.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The Balkans are but one recent example. European history is littered with "you might live in the same place and speak the same language but you're not like me because a couple hundred years ago your people were from X". Europe has the same problems the US does just spread across fewer skin tones.

eli_gottlieb 6y ago

In Europe, France and Romania are different countries, so you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France. "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but also about a shared history, migration path, acculturation, and regional population concentration. It's as much a valid "sub-nationality" of American as "Midwestern" or "Californian". Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If we didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from each-other, it would be like Europeans having no term to distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
> In Europe, France and Romania are different countries, so you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France. I never claimed there were Romanians Europeans living in France. I claimed that if you were happened to be Black and British you were still seen as simply British (until relatively recently). The same is generally true in other parts of Northern Europe as well, I have discussed this with Belgians, Germans and Frenchmen online and they all tell me similar things. I am complaining that this nonsense of saying you are a White <Nationality> or a Chinese <Nationality> or Black <Nationality> idea has been imported from America. It doesn't make sense here. > "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but also about a shared history, migration path, acculturation, and regional population concentration. It's as much a valid "sub-nationality" of American as "Midwestern" or "Californian". I don't care what they do in the USA. That is their business. It isn't a thing here and it shouldn't be. Just because we speak English in the UK, doesn't mean we are like Americans. > Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If we didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from each-other, it would be like Europeans having no term to distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard. I understand this and never claimed the opposite.
pjc50 6y ago
> you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France Thanks to EU freedom of movement, that is absolutely what you do have.
ric2b 6y ago
I'm sorry but I still don't get it. Why is referring to people by their state not enough? It's more or less equivalent to nationality in Europe. Why is race necessary or useful in the same way?

einpoklum 6y ago

> In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or a African English is absurd. Yes, but > You are your nationality. Only if you're a nationalist. Many believe in cross-national or non-national collective identities, e.g. the identity of being a wage worker. In other cases - it's groups oppressed by the state. The Catalan and Basque come to mind; and there are the Roma ("gypsies"), who are not territorially-defined. etc.

aspnet_dev 6y ago
> Only if you're a nationalist. Nope. That is how the law and the state sees it.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  So, if I live in a monarchy, and the law and the state see my identity as a loyal subject of our glorious king, then that's what I should believe?

oaiey 6y ago

Wait a second. In Germany we had work related immigrants (dominantly Turkish) in the 60s. The descendants (2/3/4 generation) of these immigrants are still classified as such (and share attributes about the black community in the US). I do not remember a proper title ... but that is just my brain right now.