This upsets me deeply. I’m German and I really don’t care where people come from or how they look. Sure there are some prejudices in my mind, but I actively fight against them, because we’re all just humans.
My partner comes from a South Asian country and I just see her as a bit more tanned than me, who is more pale. I genuinely don’t understand the concept of skin colours and I’m regularly confused by it, believe it or not.
I’m sorry for everyone who is confronted with racism etc. I deeply hope that some day we overcome these arbitrary things that divide us.
It is incredibly easy to pick out the Germans on Lemmy. After two back and forths they start screaming racist stuff about brown people.
You confuse them with US Americans.
Liberal Americans tend to be held back with racism. They only show it in subtle racist double standards.
In Germany being a Liberal means you want free healthcare but you also really hate brown people.
You seem to know nothing about Germany
They seem to know nothing in general.
I know about Germans from a bunch of people on Lemmy who said racist stuff and they all prefaced it by saying they were German.
Wtf is that date format
United America States format
As a german citizen with an immigrant background from Eastern Europe, I can confirm this. It’s bad enough for a white looking, german passing eastern european. My friends from the Middle East or Africa have had a much, much worse experience than I ever will. Hell, I was walking down the street with my black friend once and some guys in their early twenties decided it’d be funny to scream the N word at us out of their car while also telling us to “go back where we came from”.
Or another interesting story, I was at McDonalds the day right after the Hamas attack on Israel happened. Apparently the cashier thought it’d be acceptable to tell the muslim woman (that was obviously just a student or a tourist coming from abroad cause she had a huge suitcase with her with those airline tags on it) in front of me that she should learn german or don’t come here, then said shit like “only thing you muslims know to do is behead people” and gestured with his hand at his neck the movement of cutting someone’s head off. I was the only one to intervene and tell him it’s not okay. All the pasty ass german boomers behind me just stayed in line and waited for their shitty burgers to arrive, literally no words of condemnation.
As an American I’m sometimes caught off guard by European racism. Ethno-nationalism makes zero sense here - everyone’s an immigrant, except for the massively opressed indigenous Indians. I can see how it could make a kind of sense in a country that’s had one ethic group for centuries, but given his many wars and how much migration has happened over the last 1,000 years in Europe such attitudes can be dubious in places. Even still, it’s stupid, denying the humanity of people who are just trying to get by like everyone else.
The way people are racist is somewhat different, sure to different cultures and histories. I wonder how much American racism y’all have imported; we have rather different histories with different ethnicities than y’all have. Even different parts of America have different kinds and degrees of racism from each other. It’s a big fucking country.
It cracks me up how white people in usa and europe both think that europe is a post-racial utopia instead of an extremely racist colonial empire.
Can you tell me some areas in the world that are more multi-cultural and less racist than western Europe?
For example, Singaporeans are wilding about Indians coming to their country for economic reasons. Working day and night, outcompeting locals. Bringing in more Indians.
I’ve been outside of Europe, you know what I saw? A lot of mono cultures such as Europe in the 1900s.
You are right, it’s true everywhere. It’s human nature to be wary of people you don’t understand. But, for some things, you’d expect countries that are a lot further ahead in progressivism to be “nicer”, especially since, you know, they industrialised and became richer on the backs of poorer countries.
Though I suppose that’s very difficult to quantitatively measure exactly - how progressive someone is (on the scale of a country). How more accepting they are than other countries.
But there’s also room for letting people air out their issues without being told that “everyone is like this, stop whining”. That’s literally what the Russian goverment does, they implicitly tell their populace that democracy doesn’t work and that this is the best deal they’ll ever get.
Ah it can always be better. Fun fact, 80% of Congolese cobalt is owned by Chinese companies.
Strong economies trade with weak economies. Ends up in a win win situation. China only became a strong economy through the trade with priorly developed economies.
So I’m going to ignore that argument a bit. Worst thing we could do for “global south” would be to stop trading with them. It’d be called sanctioning them.
Now, eh, we got our issues to tackle in Europe. But as someone who was born in 1995, I have seen how my society has transformed. Brussels in the 90s compared to today is day and night in terms of diversity.
Now you can always say like “there’s racism!!! This is a shit hole to live in!!!”
But then… come on, it’s not that bad. I know 20% of Europe is voting anti immigration political parties. But these are usually the less educated folks.
Get educated, you won’t even be in contact with them.
My wife’s pregnant. Our kid will be indonesian-Belgian in ethnicity (or Chinese/Japanese whatever, she keeps being called Chinese in her own country lol)
So our kid will grow up in bit of a racist environment. No matter where we live.
Well, we have the privilege to live anywhere in the world that we want. My wife prefers Belgium.
I’ll trust her judgement.
We can always improve, but we live in a pretty good place.
Article talking about racism in Germany.
You : But ppl are racist everywhere!!!
Apparently no one can complain about anything because it’s bad everywhere. Guess I should just get use to being called the N-word in Germany because Singaporeans don’t like Indians
I’m saying that diversity takes time. I’ve seen Belgium go through different stages.
My wife’s indonesian. You know what she’d be if she married an African guy? Disowned.
The Congolese in Belgium seem pretty wealthy, more wealthy than the Arabs in the same cities.
Perhaps linked to the source of immigration (economic immigrants with work visas) or their culture. Am talking bout Aalst specifically.
I don’t have a clue about it at all, just trying to connect dots.
You can keep talking bout racism, will be beneficial for my kid in the future.
But don’t have tunnel vision either. There’s a lot of mono cultures out there in the world where there would be a lot of resistance to immigration. These countries would have to start from scratch when it comes to diversity. It’s not like they’d be instant paradises.
Like china had their scandal with how they treated their minority in an area.
And Africa… literal genocides as far as I’m aware.
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Surely you have a lot of data to back this claim up
That’s a 12 year old paywalled map. I don’t see any evidence for their claim and I recommend reading this carefully: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Germany
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A lot of words to defend bigotry. The human species can be a lot of awful things if we look to our worst nature. Our major advantage as a species is that we evolve faster culturally than most species can genetically. It makes us highly plastic and adaptable to our circumstances. It also means we don’t need to be assholes just because we can be. We can redefine and shape what is means to be an outsider. And, if a human can look at a drawing of a cartoon dog and feel empathy and humanize it and have their brains label it as part of the in group, we can definitely manage to not dehumanize other people just because they have different religions and customs. Appealing to tribalism is a bullshit excuse.
Religions are ideas. Ideas dont have rights. Humans have. You are free to criticise ideas & religions. They dont have rights. Criticising a religion is not bigotry.
Treating people badly simply for holding a religious belief, so long ad those beliefs do not directly infringe on others (paradox of tolerance blah blah), is bigotry. Using mental gymnastic to say that the people themselves are not being treated poorly is disingenuous.
No it isn’t.
What is this, middle school?
Yes of course, but Islamic beliefs directly infringe on others.
At the same time, more compassion is needed in dealing with people who have been drawn into deceptive and even dangerous religious thinking (I’m not just referring to Islam). Only then will they be able to leave the cult.
Islamic/religious beliefs don’t necessarily infringe on others. I’m not religious. But religion is more complicated than what you’re portraying.
But of course they always try and it’s not just the Islamics, just look at Opus Dei for example, which is one of the groups behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 25, whose current President is Kevin Roberts.
Here you can see Kevin Roberts speech at CIC (Opus Dei Headquarters on K Street, Washington DC) last year,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqgfhZpRZhg
The Opus Dei is also involved in Silicon Valley, for example they’re involved with Peter Thiel,
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-final-conversations-of-a-dying-priest
I understand the issues with organized religion. It’s just not an excuse to discriminate against religious people in general when most are low on the religious hierarchy and don’t actively hurt or want to hurt others.
we can definitely manage to not dehumanize other people just because they have different religions and customs. Appealing to tribalism is a bullshit excuse.
Why was your reaction to that to defend “criticising religion”? If this is mixed together for you, then it seems your idea of “criticising religion” indeed contains bigotry and can serve to dehumanize people.
I am not saying this to attack you. I hope it can give you some reflection. Religion is one of the mayor aspects chosen to persecute people on and we have seen anti-religious hate propaganda, in particular against Muslims running through western societies nonstop for the past decades. This kind of bigotry is incredibly subversive and very difficult to overcome. Even more so, if you aren’t conscious of it.
Feels good saying this doesn’t it?
For someone coming in with an air of all facts and logic in your first post, this response is pretty underwhelming.
It’s a different person
So it is! Still in underwhelming response.
If you take it as an honest reply, it is deeper than it appears and fits good into your concept of conditioning.
I may just be too generous and naive though.
Indicating that people who argue that humans aren’t intrinsically shitty and appeal to our better nature are performative, as you’re inferring due to social conditioning, by just being super dismissive is still underwhelming.
Our major advantage as a species is that we evolve faster culturally than most species can genetically.
Can we? Is this a statement of fact, or is this just wishful thinking on your part? Because I know quite a bit about history and, time and time again this doesn’t seem to be true whatsoever. We are tribalistic by nature, and we’ve never been able to permanently break this fact.
It’s not appealing to tribalism, it’s understanding of the factual nature of ourselves. You have to know the worst of humanity, because you’re never going to rid yourself of it. Many things will knock us down as people to our most basic of instincts, and these basic rules still govern our actions.
I happen to live in the real world, not some idealistic utopia of what the world “could be”.
Yes. Its observable just by looking at culture and society now versus thousands or even just hundreds or tens of years ago and comparing it to the time it takes for even a subspecies to arise. And, as information exchange speeds up due to technology, culture exchanges even faster and society develops faster.
I didn’t say we don’t have in groups and out groups (tribalism). I say we have control over what we consider in and out groups. It’s not idealism. It’s not what the world could be. Its just observable fact. We’ve literally shifted cultural perception in the last 50 years on all sorts of in and out groups (black and gay people are easy examples).
We didn’t shift cultural perception at all. We may have enacted laws, but the people aren’t any more or less receptive than they have been. That will take generations. Only thing that happened is that people hid it. Take a good long look at US politics and tell me that gay people and black people are any more accepted than they were…as half the population looks to tear down the institutions which allowed their equality to happen…
You haven’t changed people. Your society hasn’t changed what people are. They’ve only changed what you see from the outside. It’s only people like you, who have never had to live in the dregs of society who have this rosey ideal of the world.
Culture comes and goes. Shifts and ebbs and flows. Humanity may take longer to evolve, but that also means that what has evolved is much more stable, and much more rock solid than ‘civility’ could ever budge. We have higher-order thinking brains, and lower-order feeling brains. The lower-order feeling brain is the one that drives sex, food, hunger, and survival. That tribalistic instinct comes from that lower-order brain, and no amount of education will ever eliminate how it functions. The only way to do that would be eugenics, and the world has decided that is a “bad thing”.
If you actually think gay people are accepted the same now as in the 80s then you’re so dedicated to nonfactual pessimism that it’s a lost cause. Is there still room for improvement? Yes. But gay people used to be treated like lepers by general society.
Also its blatantly incorrect that half of society wants to tear down institutions that help black and gay people. Don’t get me wrong. It’s really bad. There are too many hateful people. But never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I think we both agree people can be very stupid, but really disagree in the way we see that play out. Many who vote maga are low information voters. But that’s because the right wing runs a propaganda machine of the highest order that promises these people the fascists aren’t the bad guys who want to take away peoples rights. Even then, not even half the population voted maga.
You’re not laying out facts. You’re feeding into negativity in a way that exaggerates things in a way that is harmful. For example, you just inferred eugenics might not be a bad thing? Serious wtf my man. You need to get a grip on your pessimism because its warping your mind. You’re seeing threats in a way that you’re horseshoeing into what you criticize.
Germans suffer from mass obedience and mass conformism more than any other country in western Europe I’ve been to. It’s a national disease
Lagom e best is commonly said in Sweden for a reason.
I’d fucking die if I’d be surrounded by a homogenous mass of “typical germans”. My fellow germans, mind you.
L take.
You don’t have to confirm to society WHEN OUR SOCIETY IS ABOUT LIBERTY
