4 ms·

I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary

I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds. As for the refugees, it's not so much racism as just a very difficult situation - a nation can't accept literally millions of young men with no language skills or qualifications and expect things to work out well. The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.

chimeracoder 4y ago
> I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are. That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues. > The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars. I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.
- gbrindisi 4y ago
  While this might be true to some extent, a huge difference between the US and Europe is that in the EU the concept of identity revolves more around nationality than ethnicity/race.
  - foldr 4y ago
    It's 'nationality' under an implicitly racialized understanding. If you are not white, having a German passport will not be enough for many Germans to consider you fully German. That's not to deny that American racial categories are either inapplicable or less central to personal identity in most European countries; but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'.
    - chimeracoder 4y ago
      > but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'. An apt choice of words, given that almost all European countries practice jus sanguinis - literally "right of the blood". In contrast to how citizenship works in most of North and South America, people who are born in European countries do not automatically get citizenship (nationality) of the country of birth. Instead, citizenship is inherited. This system became popular in many European countries in part because it provided a way to avoid automatically granting citizenship to immigrants from the now-former colonies, instead creating an extra barrier.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
foldr 4y ago
>Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds. The UK is also closer to having an open conversation around race than many other European countries, and tends to be more directly influenced by US political movements. As the sibling comment says, it is extraordinary how many Europeans seem to think that racism is a problem that exists only in the USA. Gary Younge wrote an excellent article touching on this topic in the Guardian recently. Key point: >This ability to unsee what is before our eyes is not confined to the past. The latter-day version of this selective myopia is the repeated insistence that Britain must not “import American race politics” – as if racism is an artisanal product of the US, like French champagne or Italian parmigiano reggiano. When protests erupted on the streets of British cities in 2020 under the banner of Black Lives Matter, many commentators smugly declared that this was an imitation of American fashions – even as the statue of a very English slave trader, Edward Colston, was dumped into Bristol’s harbour. https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/lest-we-remember-how-britain-buried-its-history-of-slavery https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/...
NalNezumi 4y ago
I'm born and raised in Sweden, and have a lot of non white friends and I can firmly say Europeans are about as(or more) race oriented than Americans. We simply banned asking the question. Statistiskmyndigheten explicitly banned taking any stats about ethnicities, while we all know well how middle eastern people are treated (middle eastern telephone salesman need to fake their name for the sake of sales). Europeans are less race oriented in the same way Russia is a peaceful country and Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an invasion but "special military operation" to majority of Russians living there; we simply don't hear, or want to hear it, and shun people who talk about it.

chimeracoder 4y ago

> I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are. That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues. > The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars. I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.

gbrindisi 4y ago
While this might be true to some extent, a huge difference between the US and Europe is that in the EU the concept of identity revolves more around nationality than ethnicity/race.
- foldr 4y ago
  It's 'nationality' under an implicitly racialized understanding. If you are not white, having a German passport will not be enough for many Germans to consider you fully German. That's not to deny that American racial categories are either inapplicable or less central to personal identity in most European countries; but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'.
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'. An apt choice of words, given that almost all European countries practice jus sanguinis - literally "right of the blood". In contrast to how citizenship works in most of North and South America, people who are born in European countries do not automatically get citizenship (nationality) of the country of birth. Instead, citizenship is inherited. This system became popular in many European countries in part because it provided a way to avoid automatically granting citizenship to immigrants from the now-former colonies, instead creating an extra barrier.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

foldr 4y ago

>Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds. The UK is also closer to having an open conversation around race than many other European countries, and tends to be more directly influenced by US political movements. As the sibling comment says, it is extraordinary how many Europeans seem to think that racism is a problem that exists only in the USA. Gary Younge wrote an excellent article touching on this topic in the Guardian recently. Key point: >This ability to unsee what is before our eyes is not confined to the past. The latter-day version of this selective myopia is the repeated insistence that Britain must not “import American race politics” – as if racism is an artisanal product of the US, like French champagne or Italian parmigiano reggiano. When protests erupted on the streets of British cities in 2020 under the banner of Black Lives Matter, many commentators smugly declared that this was an imitation of American fashions – even as the statue of a very English slave trader, Edward Colston, was dumped into Bristol’s harbour. https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/lest-we-remember-how-britain-buried-its-history-of-slavery https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/...

NalNezumi 4y ago

I'm born and raised in Sweden, and have a lot of non white friends and I can firmly say Europeans are about as(or more) race oriented than Americans. We simply banned asking the question. Statistiskmyndigheten explicitly banned taking any stats about ethnicities, while we all know well how middle eastern people are treated (middle eastern telephone salesman need to fake their name for the sake of sales). Europeans are less race oriented in the same way Russia is a peaceful country and Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an invasion but "special military operation" to majority of Russians living there; we simply don't hear, or want to hear it, and shun people who talk about it.