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Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. the

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their reasons. I personally find it reprehensible, but that’s my cultural values. I’m proud of where I’m from (US), where we have spent generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination based on race, gender or creed. It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction.

yunohn 4y ago
> remind people the world is far more racist > generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously). But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.
- shlant 4y ago
  > that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person. The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    The claim that the US is not perfect and the claim that it is far less racist than the rest of the world are very very different.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      I don’t see why that is the case, other than the fact that you disagree with the second sentence and not the first. Doesn’t make the sentences logically incompatible.
      - wikfwikf 4y ago
        I didn't say that they are logically incompatible. If Henry the Eighth said "I am not perfect, but I have treated my wives far better than anyone else in the world", then the admission that he is not perfect should not be sufficient to dismiss factual challenges to the second part of the claim.
      - dismantlethesun 4y ago
        They are just different claims. Which is what the Op was getting at. Does the US have to be better than the rest of the world? All counties, everywhere? This isn't really even allowing for equality with say Canada.
- rfrey 4y ago
  I'm only 25% down the comment thread, but so far not one commenter (including your parent) has said the USA has mitigated it all.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    It’s important to read the phrasing and implications, than look for the literal “we’ve solved it all”. I’d quoted the relevant portions in my comment, if you think their phrasing is perfectly logical, so be it.
bhupy 4y ago
Yup, minority here, and I wouldn't feel comfortable living anywhere except the US, Canada, the UK, and maybe ANZ. The Anglo-world in general is far more welcoming to people of color than anywhere else. I'm sure I could be comfortable wherever I am in the world, but it would be extremely difficult for me to thrive and see myself in a position of leadership (either in the private sector or the government) anywhere outside of those countries. There's a famous quote (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to Reagan: "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American." As a brown man, I feel this viscerally; I am not only deeply proud to be American, but I feel accepted as an American by my non-immigrant peers. I think the nuanced way of putting it isn't so much that "America is not racist", it's that every country in the world deals with racism as a problem, but America is perhaps among the least racist.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Probably biased, but as someone who grew up in the UK then lived in the US for 20 years, the US seems orders of magnitude more racist.
- starkd 4y ago
  I think we have a biological tendency to be somewhat racist, but among every person that I've met who could be classed as being marginally racist, usually they do not really mean the things they say. Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. I say, marginally racist, because I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronally, I think they are a very small insular group, if they exist at all.
  - latexr 4y ago
    > Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. Daryl Davis¹, through conversation, convinced a number of Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. See “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America”². ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Davis,_Race_%26_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav...
justinsaccount 4y ago
Speaking of "overt": South African Racism vs. American Racism https://youtu.be/XUuLDkDSJKg https://youtu.be/XUuLDkDSJKg Gist of his answer is south African Racism is "blacks can't live here", US Racism is "well you could live here, but your loan was denied, sorry"
- choko 4y ago
  It's illegal to deny loans on the basis of race. Your race is also not a factor in your credit score.
  - justinsaccount 4y ago
    I'm not sure what point you are trying to make?
    - speakfreely 4y ago
      People frequently cite historical racial inequities (race-based loan denials) as proof of racism in 2022 when those specific issues are no longer prevalent.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        No longer directly prevalent. The secondary effects caused the primary effects will still take many many generations to even get close to working itself out. For example, Redlining just being turned into 'your address affects your credit score'.
        choko 4y ago
        Your address does not impact your credit score. https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/how-is-credit-score-calculated https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/how-...
    - christophilus 4y ago
shlant 4y ago
> Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. As a Canadian living in Malaysia (just shy of being in the top 10 most racist countries[1]) this is definitely true (although not against me as a Caucasian). There have been several times where I am in a Grab and the casual conversation with the driver all of the sudden turns racist whether it's against Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian etc. People over here are much less concerned about tact and racism is no exception. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-racist-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-raci...
- Balero 4y ago
  I lived in KL for a little bit. Many casual conversations turned to how much better things were when the British (which I am) were in charge. Not something I was really expecting!
jnovek 4y ago
Just because other countries may have it worse doesn't mean that we're doing well. Look at our prison demographics -- black men are over-represented by a factor of two.
- starkd 4y ago
  Meaningless stat if taken by itself. You need a more in depth study as to why those people are in prison. There are sadly many black men in prison who deserve to be there. The mere fact they are incacercerated at a larger proportion of their overall population percentage does not mean they innocent bystanders. The reason why so many end up in prison needs to be addressed.
- zosima 4y ago
  And they are even more over represented in the NBA. Could there be other explanations for that than racism?
RHSeeger 4y ago
I heard it said once, about how prevalent and deep racism runs in various societies, that - Americans are racist - Europeans wrote their thesis on racism - Asians wrote the original sources on racism that the Europeans cite in their thesis
- vinay427 4y ago
  As far as I recall, institutional racism in western European colonial powers seems to predate extensive interaction with societies in Asia, and typically stems from the colonization of Africa and subsequent slave trade which depended on a dehumanization, initially at the hands of Portugal. There’s a loose argument in this editorial [1], although not the one I’ve seen before. [1] https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-racism-africa-slavery https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-r...
  - Balero 4y ago
    Racism isn't just limited to the ones that are accepted as races in the modern day USA (Latino, Black, White, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, Pacific Islander). And dehumanization and slavery has happened in many more places and times that the Atlantic Slave Trade. Whilst the current main racism problems in the US all stem from this and colonialism, everywhere in the world has their own unique problems as well.
    - vinay427 4y ago
      Did you mean to reply to my comment? It’s not clear what this has to do with what I said. I never mentioned the US at all, let alone census-designated ethnicities in the US.
starkd 4y ago
But, I suppose, an important question to ask is: which is worse? The overt in-your-face racism or the subtle more nuanced racism that avoid stating it directly? In a lot of ways, the candor is better, since at least you know what you are dealing with. A lot of the efforts in the U.S. have merely driven it underground, and the efforts to counter it have become sort of draconian in themselves (e.g. more "thought police").
api 4y ago
The fact that the US has a continuous and often contentious dialogue about racism is why the US is less racist. They don't talk about it much in places that are really racist because they don't give a damn.
_8j50 4y ago
It is a different kind of racism though. Every single country has racist people and they are hardly ever a minority. However, being looked down upon or discriminated against is one thing. Having to fear for your life and safety because they will hurt you just because of what you look like biologically is a different issue. Take the infamous Japan for example, if you live there long enough as any non-white minority you should expect to be treated badly based on your appearance alone. Take a white area in any US state or night time at a sun-down small town. Bad things will happen to you and the cops will be in on it. Or take driving as a minority in certain parts of the US, there is a chance you might run into a cop who might decide to frame you for some crime and at best you will spend a few weeks in jail before being set free. That can happen outside the US in say Russia for example, the US isn't special but the type of racism where you don't get jobs or get called names in public is different than being afraid day in day out or have large portions of a political party advocate for race wars, genoicide,etc... I mean can you think of any other country where a minorities are incarcerated at a similar rate per capita as the US? I use to think like you as well but the US is a bit special as with many things in this regard. But racism like many other evils are default settings on humans.
- lostgame 4y ago
  This is an important comment. The USA is certainly the most racist first world country I’ve been to. (I’ve visited Canada, England, Denmark, USA) The incarceration statistics for African Americans vs. white people alone tell you all you need to know.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    You have to also keep in mind, "minorities" in the US are americans and have been for as long as the majority. Pick any country where racism is considered a problem and you will see minorities are immigrants or recent children of them. In other words, those countries are resisting outsiders but Americans (and Canada, australia,etc...) are hating their own. The GP post itself is a way to try amd sweep it under the rug. Unfortunately intellectually lazy people gravitate to a binary racist vs not-racist analysis. Nuanced comparisons and suggestions mean looking under the rug where all the problems have been swept under. Minorities in the US do have more opportunities but also effects of historical and systemic racism as well as white flight and other things specific to the US and other hetrogenous countries means minorities also live in 3rd world like conditions in some places. A minority might get beat up and mistreated a lot in russia but slavery my means of false incarceration would be rare. And believe it or not from Japan to Russia to Scandanavia there are a lot of nice,kind and hospitable people. What comes as a shock to american minorities is how their race isn't even relevant unless the other person is also an asshole racist. Treating people differently because of race is too much work if you didn't grow up thinking that way unless it is a serious thing like marriage or a job (as opposed to serving a person at a restaurant).
usrusr 4y ago
I agree that most of the world is worse (or different?), but America is still special because it has so much pure racism that isn't a blend with xenophobia. Here in Germany for example, black skin Africans report wildly different amounts of discrimination: the lucky ones are those who, due to some inexplicable subtility, tend to get misidentified as African Americans. Suddenly they are on the other side of that strange line separating immigrants from expats, without even trying.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I had no idea people identified as African Americans outside of America
  - em-bee 4y ago
    why would they not? do caucasian americans identify as europeans outside of america? or mexicans as spanisch?
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      African American is neither a race nor a citizenship. If you're of African descent, born in England, you may say you're African, or English, but you'll likely never say you're English African. There's a sense of heritage in African American descent but it's also very messy. A black man from England travelling to America could plausibly be called African American because it's largely been redefined as "Black but not culturally African" in what I assumed was culturally local definition.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    "get identified", not "identify" (even if I wouldn't bet that the latter never happens, it would be a clever image projection). A mistake on the side of the potential xenophobe that usually turns out quite positive for the misidentified. "Welfare seeker" vs "impersonation of the Marshall Plan", the difference could not be bigger. The face of the "good GI", in popular memory, has black skin because that used to be so much of a standout feature back in the day.
mr90210 4y ago
Brazilians in Portugal go through this all the time, in spite of most of them looking just like the fellow Portugueses. So, it’s no a skin issue by no mean.
ED_Radish 4y ago
As someone from around the region mentioned in the article. I find it reprehensible too. And at least, from my own bubble of the people I interact with I don't think anyone I know would find it not. I like to think we're striving in the right direction too. Just at a different stage.
tyjen 4y ago
I think people who immigrate from countries where they're the majority to countries where they're a minority encounter racism/ethnicism/colorism for the first time and assume their new country is racist. However, they overlook or underappreciate the racism in their original country because it rarely if ever impacted them. In several cases, they may even imply that racism in their country is okay, because it's their country of origin and want to maintain its "purity." But, I definitely agree that countries like the US, UK, or Canada are less racist than average, but seem more racist because it's overemphasized in media. Also, as an aside mini-rant, I'm not keen on the concept of race, because it's a very fuzzy and nondescript concept compared to ethnicity or color. Race isn't a meaningful term and is mistakenly used to describe nationalities, religions, ethnicities, or other communities inappropriately.
dismantlethesun 4y ago
I almost prefer overt racism to what happens in the USA. My friend had gotten married was looking to buy a house, and his wife having a lot of trouble driving out to a location only to hear it was off the market. So he decided the he would take some of the burden from his wife, and visit places after work himself. Fortubately, he didn't coordinate this well enough so he ended up going to some off the same places as her. Guess what? In the morning, his Hispanic wife would be told the house was aleady sold or the seller was no longer offering it. That same day in the afternoon, he the White husband would get a tour and be told he could buy anytime. Racism is alive and well, if it weren't the color of my friends face he wouldn't have a house today. Funny enough his white neighbors spontaneously moved after he arrived with his Hispanic wife, and now the entire neighborhood is more multicultural.
- pandaman 4y ago
  I am curious about the technical details. Your friend's wife walks into an open house, perhaps with a sign outside, there is an agent with cookies and leaflets inside and the agent tells her the house is off the market and he or she is just chilling there for no reason at all?
  - dismantlethesun 4y ago
    Yes they say the house was just sold or the owner has just gotten news that’s taken it off the market. This isn’t really unusual when you are buying in a hot market. When I was getting my place it happened several times and the realtor would usually offer to give me an appointment at another place or just take my number so they’d call me if the current deal fell through. I think the realtors don’t leave specifically for that reason: it serves as lead generation for their other properties.
    - pandaman 4y ago
      It would be extremely unusual especially in a hot market. When I shopped for a house in such a market (the house I got had ~20 offers) in roughly half of open houses I was not the only person looking. The ones where I was the only one looking were mostly unattended. If the house is under contract already it's showing in the MLS, and if it's being offered through MLS one can lose license for refusing to show it.
jamisteven 4y ago
This. Having lived in Switzerland for the past four years I am shocked by this revelation, people think America is a super racist place, it doesnt hold a flame to other parts of the world, in fact its the opposite.
deltathreetwo 4y ago
I find this post hilarious. You're trying to juggle an idea that is in itself paradoxical and illogical. The idea that all forms of discrimination are bad. Hear me out. All discrimination is bad including cultural discrimination. However if a culture discriminates against sex or race how do I reconcile this paradox? By respecting a culture must I respect a culture a discrimination? The parent post is a confused person trying to make sense of the paradox. My suggestion is to get above all of it. You don't need to crystallize discrimination into a hard black and white rule where if you discriminate your evil and if you don't your good. Much of America has this attitude and they can't rise above it. There are legitimate logical and mathematical correlations between race and certain traits, between sex and certain traits and between culture and certain traits. To judge a person for these traits based off of sex, culture and race can be very rational due to these very real correlations. But instead America has embraced woke culture which takes these anti discrimination views to the extreme such that you get male athletes with sex changes competing with women in female sports. It's sort of insane. But I get it. This wokenesses attitude arises from a past where Americans took discrimination to illogical levels and committed atrocities because of it. Now our country lives in the extremes. You are either racist/sexist or you are woke. Pick one, because there isn't really a word for a moderate viewpoint on this topic. The hypocrisy is all around us. Don't discriminate against gender but we must segregate restrooms into male and female versions. Are you saying males are lecherous pervs and we must give females a safe space to piss, shit and do makeup? It's actually completely sexist to segregate restrooms when men and women practically share every other space.

yunohn 4y ago

> remind people the world is far more racist > generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously). But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.

shlant 4y ago
> that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person. The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  The claim that the US is not perfect and the claim that it is far less racist than the rest of the world are very very different.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    I don’t see why that is the case, other than the fact that you disagree with the second sentence and not the first. Doesn’t make the sentences logically incompatible.
    - wikfwikf 4y ago
      I didn't say that they are logically incompatible. If Henry the Eighth said "I am not perfect, but I have treated my wives far better than anyone else in the world", then the admission that he is not perfect should not be sufficient to dismiss factual challenges to the second part of the claim.
    - dismantlethesun 4y ago
      They are just different claims. Which is what the Op was getting at. Does the US have to be better than the rest of the world? All counties, everywhere? This isn't really even allowing for equality with say Canada.
rfrey 4y ago
I'm only 25% down the comment thread, but so far not one commenter (including your parent) has said the USA has mitigated it all.
- yunohn 4y ago
  It’s important to read the phrasing and implications, than look for the literal “we’ve solved it all”. I’d quoted the relevant portions in my comment, if you think their phrasing is perfectly logical, so be it.

bhupy 4y ago

Yup, minority here, and I wouldn't feel comfortable living anywhere except the US, Canada, the UK, and maybe ANZ. The Anglo-world in general is far more welcoming to people of color than anywhere else. I'm sure I could be comfortable wherever I am in the world, but it would be extremely difficult for me to thrive and see myself in a position of leadership (either in the private sector or the government) anywhere outside of those countries. There's a famous quote (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to Reagan: "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American." As a brown man, I feel this viscerally; I am not only deeply proud to be American, but I feel accepted as an American by my non-immigrant peers. I think the nuanced way of putting it isn't so much that "America is not racist", it's that every country in the world deals with racism as a problem, but America is perhaps among the least racist.

dboreham 4y ago
Probably biased, but as someone who grew up in the UK then lived in the US for 20 years, the US seems orders of magnitude more racist.
starkd 4y ago
I think we have a biological tendency to be somewhat racist, but among every person that I've met who could be classed as being marginally racist, usually they do not really mean the things they say. Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. I say, marginally racist, because I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronally, I think they are a very small insular group, if they exist at all.
- latexr 4y ago
  > Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. Daryl Davis¹, through conversation, convinced a number of Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. See “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America”². ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Davis,_Race_%26_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav...

justinsaccount 4y ago

Speaking of "overt": South African Racism vs. American Racism https://youtu.be/XUuLDkDSJKg https://youtu.be/XUuLDkDSJKg Gist of his answer is south African Racism is "blacks can't live here", US Racism is "well you could live here, but your loan was denied, sorry"

choko 4y ago
It's illegal to deny loans on the basis of race. Your race is also not a factor in your credit score.
- justinsaccount 4y ago
  I'm not sure what point you are trying to make?
  - speakfreely 4y ago
    People frequently cite historical racial inequities (race-based loan denials) as proof of racism in 2022 when those specific issues are no longer prevalent.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      No longer directly prevalent. The secondary effects caused the primary effects will still take many many generations to even get close to working itself out. For example, Redlining just being turned into 'your address affects your credit score'.
      - choko 4y ago
        Your address does not impact your credit score. https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/how-is-credit-score-calculated https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/how-...
  - christophilus 4y ago

shlant 4y ago

> Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. As a Canadian living in Malaysia (just shy of being in the top 10 most racist countries[1]) this is definitely true (although not against me as a Caucasian). There have been several times where I am in a Grab and the casual conversation with the driver all of the sudden turns racist whether it's against Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian etc. People over here are much less concerned about tact and racism is no exception. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-racist-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-raci...

Balero 4y ago
I lived in KL for a little bit. Many casual conversations turned to how much better things were when the British (which I am) were in charge. Not something I was really expecting!

jnovek 4y ago

Just because other countries may have it worse doesn't mean that we're doing well. Look at our prison demographics -- black men are over-represented by a factor of two.

starkd 4y ago
Meaningless stat if taken by itself. You need a more in depth study as to why those people are in prison. There are sadly many black men in prison who deserve to be there. The mere fact they are incacercerated at a larger proportion of their overall population percentage does not mean they innocent bystanders. The reason why so many end up in prison needs to be addressed.
zosima 4y ago
And they are even more over represented in the NBA. Could there be other explanations for that than racism?

RHSeeger 4y ago

I heard it said once, about how prevalent and deep racism runs in various societies, that - Americans are racist - Europeans wrote their thesis on racism - Asians wrote the original sources on racism that the Europeans cite in their thesis

vinay427 4y ago
As far as I recall, institutional racism in western European colonial powers seems to predate extensive interaction with societies in Asia, and typically stems from the colonization of Africa and subsequent slave trade which depended on a dehumanization, initially at the hands of Portugal. There’s a loose argument in this editorial [1], although not the one I’ve seen before. [1] https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-racism-africa-slavery https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-r...
- Balero 4y ago
  Racism isn't just limited to the ones that are accepted as races in the modern day USA (Latino, Black, White, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, Pacific Islander). And dehumanization and slavery has happened in many more places and times that the Atlantic Slave Trade. Whilst the current main racism problems in the US all stem from this and colonialism, everywhere in the world has their own unique problems as well.
  - vinay427 4y ago
    Did you mean to reply to my comment? It’s not clear what this has to do with what I said. I never mentioned the US at all, let alone census-designated ethnicities in the US.

starkd 4y ago

But, I suppose, an important question to ask is: which is worse? The overt in-your-face racism or the subtle more nuanced racism that avoid stating it directly? In a lot of ways, the candor is better, since at least you know what you are dealing with. A lot of the efforts in the U.S. have merely driven it underground, and the efforts to counter it have become sort of draconian in themselves (e.g. more "thought police").

api 4y ago

The fact that the US has a continuous and often contentious dialogue about racism is why the US is less racist. They don't talk about it much in places that are really racist because they don't give a damn.

_8j50 4y ago

It is a different kind of racism though. Every single country has racist people and they are hardly ever a minority. However, being looked down upon or discriminated against is one thing. Having to fear for your life and safety because they will hurt you just because of what you look like biologically is a different issue. Take the infamous Japan for example, if you live there long enough as any non-white minority you should expect to be treated badly based on your appearance alone. Take a white area in any US state or night time at a sun-down small town. Bad things will happen to you and the cops will be in on it. Or take driving as a minority in certain parts of the US, there is a chance you might run into a cop who might decide to frame you for some crime and at best you will spend a few weeks in jail before being set free. That can happen outside the US in say Russia for example, the US isn't special but the type of racism where you don't get jobs or get called names in public is different than being afraid day in day out or have large portions of a political party advocate for race wars, genoicide,etc... I mean can you think of any other country where a minorities are incarcerated at a similar rate per capita as the US? I use to think like you as well but the US is a bit special as with many things in this regard. But racism like many other evils are default settings on humans.

lostgame 4y ago
This is an important comment. The USA is certainly the most racist first world country I’ve been to. (I’ve visited Canada, England, Denmark, USA) The incarceration statistics for African Americans vs. white people alone tell you all you need to know.
- _8j50 4y ago
  You have to also keep in mind, "minorities" in the US are americans and have been for as long as the majority. Pick any country where racism is considered a problem and you will see minorities are immigrants or recent children of them. In other words, those countries are resisting outsiders but Americans (and Canada, australia,etc...) are hating their own. The GP post itself is a way to try amd sweep it under the rug. Unfortunately intellectually lazy people gravitate to a binary racist vs not-racist analysis. Nuanced comparisons and suggestions mean looking under the rug where all the problems have been swept under. Minorities in the US do have more opportunities but also effects of historical and systemic racism as well as white flight and other things specific to the US and other hetrogenous countries means minorities also live in 3rd world like conditions in some places. A minority might get beat up and mistreated a lot in russia but slavery my means of false incarceration would be rare. And believe it or not from Japan to Russia to Scandanavia there are a lot of nice,kind and hospitable people. What comes as a shock to american minorities is how their race isn't even relevant unless the other person is also an asshole racist. Treating people differently because of race is too much work if you didn't grow up thinking that way unless it is a serious thing like marriage or a job (as opposed to serving a person at a restaurant).

usrusr 4y ago

I agree that most of the world is worse (or different?), but America is still special because it has so much pure racism that isn't a blend with xenophobia. Here in Germany for example, black skin Africans report wildly different amounts of discrimination: the lucky ones are those who, due to some inexplicable subtility, tend to get misidentified as African Americans. Suddenly they are on the other side of that strange line separating immigrants from expats, without even trying.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
I had no idea people identified as African Americans outside of America
- em-bee 4y ago
  why would they not? do caucasian americans identify as europeans outside of america? or mexicans as spanisch?
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    African American is neither a race nor a citizenship. If you're of African descent, born in England, you may say you're African, or English, but you'll likely never say you're English African. There's a sense of heritage in African American descent but it's also very messy. A black man from England travelling to America could plausibly be called African American because it's largely been redefined as "Black but not culturally African" in what I assumed was culturally local definition.
- usrusr 4y ago
  "get identified", not "identify" (even if I wouldn't bet that the latter never happens, it would be a clever image projection). A mistake on the side of the potential xenophobe that usually turns out quite positive for the misidentified. "Welfare seeker" vs "impersonation of the Marshall Plan", the difference could not be bigger. The face of the "good GI", in popular memory, has black skin because that used to be so much of a standout feature back in the day.

mr90210 4y ago

Brazilians in Portugal go through this all the time, in spite of most of them looking just like the fellow Portugueses. So, it’s no a skin issue by no mean.

ED_Radish 4y ago

As someone from around the region mentioned in the article. I find it reprehensible too. And at least, from my own bubble of the people I interact with I don't think anyone I know would find it not. I like to think we're striving in the right direction too. Just at a different stage.

tyjen 4y ago

I think people who immigrate from countries where they're the majority to countries where they're a minority encounter racism/ethnicism/colorism for the first time and assume their new country is racist. However, they overlook or underappreciate the racism in their original country because it rarely if ever impacted them. In several cases, they may even imply that racism in their country is okay, because it's their country of origin and want to maintain its "purity." But, I definitely agree that countries like the US, UK, or Canada are less racist than average, but seem more racist because it's overemphasized in media. Also, as an aside mini-rant, I'm not keen on the concept of race, because it's a very fuzzy and nondescript concept compared to ethnicity or color. Race isn't a meaningful term and is mistakenly used to describe nationalities, religions, ethnicities, or other communities inappropriately.

dismantlethesun 4y ago

I almost prefer overt racism to what happens in the USA. My friend had gotten married was looking to buy a house, and his wife having a lot of trouble driving out to a location only to hear it was off the market. So he decided the he would take some of the burden from his wife, and visit places after work himself. Fortubately, he didn't coordinate this well enough so he ended up going to some off the same places as her. Guess what? In the morning, his Hispanic wife would be told the house was aleady sold or the seller was no longer offering it. That same day in the afternoon, he the White husband would get a tour and be told he could buy anytime. Racism is alive and well, if it weren't the color of my friends face he wouldn't have a house today. Funny enough his white neighbors spontaneously moved after he arrived with his Hispanic wife, and now the entire neighborhood is more multicultural.

pandaman 4y ago
I am curious about the technical details. Your friend's wife walks into an open house, perhaps with a sign outside, there is an agent with cookies and leaflets inside and the agent tells her the house is off the market and he or she is just chilling there for no reason at all?
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  Yes they say the house was just sold or the owner has just gotten news that’s taken it off the market. This isn’t really unusual when you are buying in a hot market. When I was getting my place it happened several times and the realtor would usually offer to give me an appointment at another place or just take my number so they’d call me if the current deal fell through. I think the realtors don’t leave specifically for that reason: it serves as lead generation for their other properties.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    It would be extremely unusual especially in a hot market. When I shopped for a house in such a market (the house I got had ~20 offers) in roughly half of open houses I was not the only person looking. The ones where I was the only one looking were mostly unattended. If the house is under contract already it's showing in the MLS, and if it's being offered through MLS one can lose license for refusing to show it.

jamisteven 4y ago

This. Having lived in Switzerland for the past four years I am shocked by this revelation, people think America is a super racist place, it doesnt hold a flame to other parts of the world, in fact its the opposite.

deltathreetwo 4y ago

I find this post hilarious. You're trying to juggle an idea that is in itself paradoxical and illogical. The idea that all forms of discrimination are bad. Hear me out. All discrimination is bad including cultural discrimination. However if a culture discriminates against sex or race how do I reconcile this paradox? By respecting a culture must I respect a culture a discrimination? The parent post is a confused person trying to make sense of the paradox. My suggestion is to get above all of it. You don't need to crystallize discrimination into a hard black and white rule where if you discriminate your evil and if you don't your good. Much of America has this attitude and they can't rise above it. There are legitimate logical and mathematical correlations between race and certain traits, between sex and certain traits and between culture and certain traits. To judge a person for these traits based off of sex, culture and race can be very rational due to these very real correlations. But instead America has embraced woke culture which takes these anti discrimination views to the extreme such that you get male athletes with sex changes competing with women in female sports. It's sort of insane. But I get it. This wokenesses attitude arises from a past where Americans took discrimination to illogical levels and committed atrocities because of it. Now our country lives in the extremes. You are either racist/sexist or you are woke. Pick one, because there isn't really a word for a moderate viewpoint on this topic. The hypocrisy is all around us. Don't discriminate against gender but we must segregate restrooms into male and female versions. Are you saying males are lecherous pervs and we must give females a safe space to piss, shit and do makeup? It's actually completely sexist to segregate restrooms when men and women practically share every other space.