One of the weirdest things I've found about America as someone who grew up in Europe is racial segregation.
When I look on Facebook pictures of my european friends, they tend to be in a big mix of colors. Sure, there's more Indians at an Indian wedding in London, but you will see the little gang of white/east asian/black kids there too. Go to a majority (ie white) wedding and you will see they have a bunch of Indian/Chinese/Black etc friends.
When I look on the Facebook pictures of American friends, they are quite clearly color segregated. I really find it odd that out of maybe 300 guests at a wedding in SF, only a couple are not from the same minority.
America is also the country where I've found the strongest racial stereotypes. In Europe it's not really the stuff of comedians anymore, but when I went to a comedy night in NYC, the guy looked at me and said "Why aren't you doing homework?". Funny, sure, but it says something about what the audience already believes about various people.
Segregation is often self-imposed. As an Asian-American, I often can't relate with white people. What they worry about and enjoy do nothing for me. This started from a young age (what is allowance? what is getting grounded? hobbies?) and although I have many close white friends, on a whole they are the minority in my friend groups. The only way this segregation has to do with race is that stereotypes are exactly that, true for a distribution. Another way to say this is that people I end up relating well with tend to come from the same experiences (namely that of growing up Asian-American).
In addition, I'm often super surprised at these comments. The US is many orders of magnitude less accepting of racism than Europe. Europeans on the whole speak freely of their negative opinions of Muslims and gypsies. In the US, any comment mentioning race carries immediately with it a negative connotation. This is exactly why it is the breadstuff of comedians. There is no humor in something that is simply accepted as "truth" as much of European racism is.
I hate speaking anecdotally, but just as a credit to my experience with racism in Europe as an Asian-American, my time there was filled with experiences ranging from ignorance to aggressive defensiveness. Most of this can be explained away as just inexperience due to Europe's immense racial homogeneity. Often they would treat me as a fob which was an acceptable assumption. But this just goes to show how behind Europe is in the racial conversation (they don't even have racial experiences!)
It's strange. I'd echo the sentiments expressed in the parent about the UK when it comes to Australia, too. Seems like people identify with their race before their nationality in the US. We don't have "African-Australians" or "Asian-Australians" here. Everyone is just Australian.
>I often can't relate with white people. What they worry about and enjoy do nothing for me. This started from a young age (what is allowance? what is getting grounded? hobbies?) and although I have many close white friends, on a whole they are the minority in my friend groups.
Interesting. Do you personally think that if a white person were to express similar sentiments, he would be guilty of racism?
I'm trying to construct the similar sentiments you are asking me to. Let me know if this is correct.
> I often can't relate with asian people. What they worry about and enjoy do nothing for me. This started from a young age (why is there chinese school on saturday? what is discipline by disappointment? no privacy?) and although I have many close asian friends, on a whole they are the minority in my friend groups.
Well educated white people tend to be more sensitive to things seeming racist, because they really don't want to seem racist. Hence the idea of political correctness (PC). I get the impression that Asians in Asia don't care as much about being PC as white people in America.
But that difference - like the differences you mention - isn't racial, it's cultural. The culture just happens to correlate with the race.
> why is there chinese school on saturday?
There are plenty of white minorities that would identify with this. E.g. Jews have Hebrew school, Greeks have Greek school. Have you seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
> But that difference - like the differences you mention - isn't racial, it's cultural. The culture just happens to correlate with the race.
That was exactly my point. But because they correlate with race, they get imposed upon you and associated with you even beyond what culture brings.
> There are plenty of white minorities that would identify with this.
Part of this must take into account how Jews and Greeks were not considered 'white' for centuries. Furthermore, it also speaks to how I don't even know exactly why the average white person implicitly doesn't understand me.
Those strike me as understandable sentiments, but I do think they are racist. Are they bigoted? No. Racist? Yes.
Such sentiments try to extrapolate information on a group of people based off of a non-random sampling. There's bias introduced by the geography of one's life, if nothing else.
In Europe, capitals tend to have a much less racist behavior. If you go to Paris or London, for example, then I agree with you and it's true that you have less segregation and a tendency not to have strong racism (but even then it depends of which minority you're part of... Muslims tend to have a harder time even in capitals compared to all other minorities)
However, if you go to the small cities, then racism is very prevalent. My wife is asian and when we're in small cities in France (Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Toulouse, ...) it often happens that people speak to me but behave as if she were transparent. They just completely ignore her as if she weren't there.
It also shows in term of votes with smaller cities tending to vote for parties like the French FN.
Saying europe has better race relations than america is misguided. you can't compare the two. america has 300 million people and is 70% white, 15% black, 12-20% latino and 6% asian. for comparison, the UK has 60mm (about the size of california and new york) and is 87% white, 7% asian and 6% black, for example. the UK is also what we call an urbanized ountry, in that a large proportion lives in cities, which is where most of its people of color reside.
it is easier to integrate urban, small countries with manageable percentage of immigrants. e.g., Sweden (population 10mm) versus america (pop 300mm). when you have a large land mass, enormous population and very high rates of immigration and naturalization (let's not forget that France and Germany do not allow as much naturalization as USA), the task of integration is that much harder and more complex.
Funny how in America they classify Arab people or more accurately native Arabic speakers as white when it is actually not accurate at all and it just shows how ridiculous these designations or labels are.
At least, let them get their racial terms or classifications right before they could start muddying the water hype up racial tensions between communities.
America's racial classifications follow a very practical application rather than some grand racial theory. this is a good thing, because as we know race is more a phenotype than genotype. thus arabs are grouped with whites because, according to traditional racial classification, they are caucasoids. there has been no adjustment to this because immigration from the middle east has not been a huge number since those days. indians (south asians), also considered caucasoids in the 19th century system, are however lump-summed with asians (mostly mongoloids), for practical reasons. the practical reason has to do with socio-politics. for now, indians have similar immigration and social characteristics in common with east asians. thus categorizing them together has a practical purpose with respect to social services, immigration policy, etc.
as you can see, classification is a tricky problem. america's classification is constantly evolving. every 10 years america takes a census and every time there is a change in the boxes for race categories. this is an attempt to keep pace with changing views. it's not a perfect system but it's not bad. it certainly beats france's system (which literally ignores all racial categories according to principle--leading to all manner of unintended negative consequences including inequality towards recent immigrants or citizens of color).
It's funny, but I would have said the exact opposite. Not sure what part of Europe you've lived in, but I found the UK to be very segregated compared to New York. There's a sense that anyone was welcome in Britain, but immigrants could never really be British.
> In Europe it's not really the stuff of comedians anymore,
The BBC has plenty of comedy where racial stereotypes are commonplace. Even the great lefty Stephen Fry has them on his QI show, as he makes jokes about 'dagos' and Alan does his shitty Mexican "speedy gonzales" joke accents. Occasionally you'll see a Welsh celebrity arc up over the incessant sheep-shagging jokes as well. I can't speak for European standup per se (or continental fare), but I can speak to the BBC tv episodes that get shipped over here.
One thing that stood out for me was that I remember seeing John Oliver call out Dara O'Briain on Mock the Week for making racist French jokes (on the smelly/don't wash stereotype) and now Oliver has his own show in the US, he's constantly using racist stereotypes in his skits. Racial stereotypes seem to be pretty hard to get out of comedy, even amongst the more highbrow comedians...
I too have noticed the same. While the part of Europe I come from is completely white for various reasons, nobody really cares about race. If anything we'll make jokes about ethnicity. But they're only jokes, no systemic segregation happening.
Then you come to the US and it's all about race race race and more race. Even in what is supposed to be their most progressive city - SF - it's just about race race race. Even street comedians/entertainers will play the race card every two minutes.
Honestly, it's boring. I understand that US likes to codify class issues as race issues, but ... stop. Call them class issues, and address them. Turning class warfare into race warfare doesn't help anyone. You are born with your race and you can't change it. You are born with your class, but you can change it.
> While the part of Europe I come from is completely white for various reasons, nobody really cares about race.
Maybe because in a homogeneous society, there's no reason to talk about race.
> Then you come to the US and it's all about race race race and more race.
Maybe because unlike the parts in Europe that you mentioned (which were completely white), there are different races here.
> You are born with your race and you can't change it. You are born with your class, but you can change it. Focus on that part.
People here are NOT discussing race because they want to change their races. They are discussing race because just like sexism, homophobia, etc, racism against anyone (even if they're doing well professionally) is something to highlight, acknowledge and work towards getting rid of.
I'll certainly want to be in a country that actively talks about race than a country that doesn't. If you think not talking about race means there's no or less racism in Europe, then just look at soccer / football.
> I understand that US likes to codify class issues as race issues, but ... stop. Call them class issues, and address them. Turning class warfare into race warfare doesn't help anyone. You are born with your race and you can't change it. You are born with your class, but you can change it.
This is a very European attitude, to the point where four European countries have gone so far as to remove the word "race" from their lawbooks[0]. The problem is that removing actual racism isn't as easy as simply erasing the word, and by removing the word, we remove the ability to take effective action to combat racism.
This isn't turning 'class warfare into race warfare'. Masking racism in this way makes it impossible to address, and thereby perpetuates racism.
When I look on Facebook pictures of my european friends, they tend to be in a big mix of colors. Sure, there's more Indians at an Indian wedding in London, but you will see the little gang of white/east asian/black kids there too. Go to a majority (ie white) wedding and you will see they have a bunch of Indian/Chinese/Black etc friends.
When I look on the Facebook pictures of American friends, they are quite clearly color segregated. I really find it odd that out of maybe 300 guests at a wedding in SF, only a couple are not from the same minority.
America is also the country where I've found the strongest racial stereotypes. In Europe it's not really the stuff of comedians anymore, but when I went to a comedy night in NYC, the guy looked at me and said "Why aren't you doing homework?". Funny, sure, but it says something about what the audience already believes about various people.