Thursday, January 28, 2016

Is Europe more racist than the USA?

It's difficult to measure something like racism, of course.
And it's a sensitive subject because few people anywhere want to be called a racist or thought of as a racist.
Certainly racist attitudes exist in Europe and in some cases are voiced quite openly--much more openly than in most cities in America in my experience.
Or maybe, it's more that the racists in America tend to be so obviously uneducated and from a certain lower-class--I knew some rednecks in my hometown who were very open about their racist attitudes; whereas in central Denver, the town I lived longest in the USA, I rarely--perhaps never--heard anything racist from anyone white.
(Not saying that there isn't racism in Denver, of course. Just that I, as a white man, didn't personally witness many racist comments like I did in Southwest Missouri.)
Which is ironic, as my hometown has a relatively low percentage of minorities; whereas Denver was possibly nearly 50% non-white while I was living there.
There might be a lesson there.
This has led me to believe that it's mostly uneducated white people who don't have a whole lot of everyday experience with minorities who voice the most racist things in America.
IN contrast, I've heard racist statements from white collar, highly educated Europeans fairly regularly.

Where I live most of the racism is directed towards local Roma groups(Romany).
The fact is, outside of some urban centers like London and parts of Western Europe, Europe is not really as racially diverse as the USA; furthermore, the history of race and race relations in Europe is completely different and the two facts together inform attitudes towards race in totally different ways.

Racism is America's curse.

Ethno-linguistic nationalism is Europe's curse.

These two 'isms' are similar and there is a lot of  overlap, of course, but they are different things. To an American looking through the prism of racial division, defined in American terms(White*, Native American, African American, Asian, Pacific Islander,), there is very little difference between, say, a German, a Northern Italian, a Bohemian or a Swiss person.
Not necessarily so for a European. And the divisions might be even starker when they compare (say) a Swede to an Englishman to a Croat or a Pole.
Just as America's history is stained with  slavery and the eradication and betrayal of American Indian culture, Europe's history(especially in the last few centuries) is stained with long wars and atrocities committed among ethno-linguistic lines; this is why after WWII the UN approved the forcible removal of German speaking people's from land which they had occupied for centuries(i.e., the Sudetenland, etc): it was simply felt that the mixing of ethno-linguistic groups had been a recipe for trouble.
Nowadays, with a peace in place for many decades held by the NATO alliance, a spirit of cooperation encouraged by the EU and the Schengen Zone and the general homogenizing influence of modern globalism, this bugbear may be finally fading from Europe. Although the rise of far right wing neo-fascist groups and political parties in the last decade do seem to be putting that to the test.

Considering the membership numbers(a minority but not generally a tiny one) of these far right groups, and if you accept ethno-linguistic nationalism as roughly equivalent to racism, I'd say it was about the same.
But this is really talking about the human heart.
The system is far less racist than America's I think ,especially when you consider America's love affair with incarceration in general; there is no doubt in my mind that black Americans who commit crimes are much more likely to be incarcerated for certain offenses than white Americans--this is something that is easily proven by statistics.
Is the same true in Europe? I actually don't know.
But European sentences for criminals tend to be far less harsh than American sentences, so even if it is, you have fewer people locked away for good (and no death penalty at all.) Which is at least something.
So on the whole, I think that I would say European systems of justice are probably less racist.
We might not ever be able to eradicate unfair discrimination based on race(or ethno-linguistic background) from the heart of humankind; but maybe we  can eradicate it from our systems, at least.
My feeling is that Europe does a better job with this.

*I use the word 'white' as I simply abhor the term 'Caucasian.' In what imaginary world do white people hail from the Caucausus?



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