this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Americans
Mm, yes, no one else in the history of the world has ever been racist.
I get that, I've just found Americans online like to inject race into everything regardless of where they are on the political spectrum
Do they have little flags attached to their names, like that one 4chan board? Maybe just the loud obnoxiously Americans do that, or you associate anyone loud and obnoxious with being American.
Either way, race has been a huge issue since before America even existed (they mostly imported their racism from Europe). I won't deny that quite a few loud groups use race as wedge issue these days, though, no matter their political spectrum.
No, I'd say race is primarily US-American concept.
Language/nationality are in Europe the most relevant factors. Racism simply due to skin color does happen too but it occurs less often than other forms of discrimination (because there are simply significantly fewer people of a different "race". The US-American view would just see white people discriminating against white people.)
I mean, a Black and a White US-American are culturally far more similar than an English and a Polish guy but in looks far more different. So US-Americans discriminate primarily by looks (racism) while the English discriminate primarily by culture (xenophobia). That's why British Indians (considered to belong to a Brown race in the US) can be the leaders of the Tories with barely any outcry while in the US Obama caused Republicans to collapse into a hatred singularity called "Trump".
You realize that times have existed before now, right? The entire concept of racism in America comes from the European idea of "Noble Savages". Not to mention the slave trade was a Dutch concept that was imported to the US for a huge profit.
The idea that somehow everyone else's hands are clean but apparently everyone in the US is somehow tainted is a ridiculous passing of the blame so you don't have to consider the actual cause, rather than a nationalist one.
Granted, you are talking about how European ideas are xenophobic, so displaying your own is a point in your favor.
Times before are somewhat irrelevant when speaking about today. Not because today is supposed to be independent of the past, mind you, but rather because there have been strongly varying rates of progress across different countries. You cannot extrapolate two countries are the same today because they were the same in the past. Cultures diverge.
And nowhere did I claim everyone in the US was tainted while elsewhere everything is perfectly fine? Did you even read my comment? There's good reason I used the term "primarily" several times. This is a serious topic and so I thought about my precise wording.
Ukrainian refugees in Europe are treated better than Subsaharan African refugees. Both experience xenophobia, the latter further experiences racism. Neither group is treated remotely well.
If we want to get really specific, racism is just one specific type of xenophobia where looks alone determine membership in the in-group or various out-groups. But to claim all xenophobia is racism is misleading at best and outright wrong at worst.
Simple US-American models about racism that are broadly accurate there just cannot be applied elsewhere without adaption. Not doing that is very much "progressive" US defaultism.
*gestures broadly at the continent of Asia*
Eventually they'll move on and realize that xenophobia is the cool new thing to inject into everything constantly.
It's almost like race is a foundational conversation to the USA, a colonial nation.
I'm Canadian so same here but we don't try to label things "white thing" or "POC thing" because that's weird
No, we just white wash our racist and homophobic history. Please learn about our history, it's VERY racist.
I know and I guess that's my point. Mêmes like this basically just continue a weird modern "progressive" segregation when you're all just Americans.
Edit: to expand on that, what I mean is that is this meme trying to say white skin is more the deciding factor on how someone acts vs the environment they grew up in?
And so do the Americans and every other colonial nation.
Or you have no sense of humor, you are supposed to celebrate differences. Not mash them down and hide them like a shameful secret
The humour is based on saying that how someone acts is derived from the colour of their skin
edit: is it not?
edit 2: obviously Canada has a huge racism problem too, especially in regards to indigenous peoples but generally progressive people don't make jokes like this because it's honestly sort of racist
No, but only Americans bring it up into every random topic like we all share your interest in mild racism.
Better to talk about it than quietly perpetuate it, or not so quietly, I've never been called a mutt by another American but Europeans love to mock my "racial impurity"
Yet again, no one is saying don't talk about it.
And that's nice? I'm not from Europe, nor do I see what purpose your little rant against an entire continents worth of peoples is meant to achieve. Does engaging in racism somehow back-up your claims about racism?
Ironic
Unfortunately it’s largely the same here down under.
First we hated the Greeks after world war 2
We love them now.
Then we hated the asians in the 80’s and 90’s
We love them now
Then we hated the Muslim in the 2000’s
We largely enjoy their company and food now.
Then we hated the Indians.
That’s still happening a lot but a large section of the population has moved on to hating the Sudanese.
Yeah, europeans' racism is so ingrained in their cultures, they dont even talk about it. Its just the way it is.
It's only Americans trying to make fucking high fives a race thing
No one is arguing racism doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world.
Stop acting so defensive and look at what people are actually saying is the problem here.