(Disclaimer: So first I wanted to emphasize and acknowledge that this can be a sensitive and emotional topic. This question is solely because I’m curious and am trying to understand it from an educational/sociological perspective. I know that a lot of people online can have a short temper but this is not a bait, I just genuinely wanna understand. I hope I will find a few more intellectual people here who won’t get offended and can give a more empirical answer. And please apologize if my English is not perfect, English is not my native language and I’m just 21.)
So as a German I’m very close and familiar with the horrible actions that humanity committed in the past. I’d say compared to America who enslaved people based on their skin color Germany was way worse by mass executing and enslaving people based on their ethnicity/religion.
But there is one big difference that I don’t understand: Here in Germany we are extensively educated about what happened in the 3rd Reich. It’s a big part about our education to learn and understand what horrible things happened and why they happened to make sure this never happens again. This kinda lead to the point where many Germans are deeply ashamed just for being a German (even though they’re quite far detached from what happened) and this is also a reason why you won’t find many German flags hanging here.
So I’m not much aware about Americas education on their slavery but I experienced extensive racism and misunderstanding from Americans about race to the point where many (of course not all but many) Americans make a big deal out of race as if it defines their core personality and seem to overly obsess to the point where it seems people get different opportunities and are still to this day getting treated unfairly based on their skin. Even though every educated person knows that skin color is not changing someone’s personality since we’re biologically all the same race called homo sapiens sapiens and what people call “race” is not scientifically accurate but rather a social construct. This seems to go further where people still use racial slurs that have been used for slaves (like the so called n-word) and people overly focusing on skin color like saying they don’t wanna be friends with white/black people or don’t wanna date them. And it almost seems like it’s getting worse in a way and was somewhat better maybe around the 80’s.
As a German this feels very weird and wrong to many of us (I talked to many Germans about this who feel similar including Germans who lived in America for a while). Because the equivalence would be if we still continued to make a big thing out of whether someone is a Jude or not which we don’t. Whether someone is a Jew or how black or white someone is, really isn’t a thing at all here. Of course I’m totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany (but also in the US and every part of the world) but the general way of thinking about “race” in everyday life seems to be very different.
Because to me this stereotype that people solely have low cognitive abilities based on their skin color is very outdated. We all have different skin, there are no lines, humans are colorful and not “black or white”. I wonder if there have been strong efforts of American politics and society to get rid of these stereotypes and gain equality for everyone. Because I wonder what the reasons are why this seems like not being the case (at least to the extent it should be) and it seems unnecessarily divisive. Since to me educating about these stereotypes and not putting people into boxes is the key for getting rid of it when there is a mass willingness of people wanting to see each as people and not just as a color and finally put this behind. Might there maybe be industrial or political interests in keeping this divisiveness?
Like I said I’m very open minded and am trying to understand. Please have understandment for my perspective and try to be thoughtful in your answer.
In the end of the day I would just wish for whole humanity that we could put those toxic and destructive actions to the past and start embrace loving everyone for who they are as an individual.
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Germany is also full of racial stereotypes. Particularly towards people from the Middle East and eastern Europe. It’s actually quite bad. I’ve known people who moved to Germany to study who decided to move back just because of the racism.
I immigrated to Germany some years ago and the Ausländerbehörde had pre checked the checkmark saying I would need welfare on my paperwork. I had to argue for like a 15 min to get them to uncheck it. Even after showing my voluntarily paid German taxes for the past 2 years.
I don’t even look brown. I imagine other people have it even worse.
Like I mentioned in my post I wasn’t trying to downplay the racism that’s also still prevalent in Germany at all.
From my view and from other Germans I talked to who even lived in America it just seems like Americans overly focus on ethnicity and these stereotypes linked to that on a daily basis that’s dividing these people to a bigger extent than in Germany.
Maybe I’m wrong here and I don’t want to discard any personal experiences with this that are different especially for people who were more directly affected by this. And I’m very open for thoughtful and fair education about it.
But generally it seemed like to me that Germany is pretty open for migrants and refugees. Currently 17% of the German population are first-generation immigrants where in America it’s only 13% of the population with the plan to also soon mass deport illegal immigrants.
55% of all Muslims also have German citizenship and to me it felt like that many of them are very well integrated with many even living here for more than one generation and are pretty much being treated like any other German.
I think the clash might be more with immigrants/refugees who aren’t from Germany and can barely speak the language. Because when you’re living here since birth no one really questions your ethnicity whereas in America it seems to be a thing of daily occurrence where people are divided by just their skin color even though all of these people involved are as equally American and lived there for multiple generations.
From what I understood there are even schools for only black people. These such things are unthinkable from a Germans perspective. I don’t think we have schools that are only for black, or Jews, or Arab, or Muslim people.
I’ll give you an example as well: I know a German girl who has Asian ethnicity. She told me that her ethnicity basically never was a thing in Germany where she was just another German. But when she was doing an exchange year in America she noticed how big of a thing it is in America to make a deal out of someones ethnicity like when it’s Asian which felt very weird to her.
I think your conclusion about German genocide being based on religion has a pretty large blind spot. The Nazis executed based on ethnicity (slavs, Roma people…), not to mention sexual proclivities or even disabilities. Also, the Nazi Holocaust wasn’t the first German genocide of the 20th century, which Germany kickstarted in 1904 by genociding the Herrero and Nama peoples of Namibia, then colonial German South West Africa. So I believe the racial stereotypes are a part and parcel of most European bigotry and not in any way exclusive to the US.
Wow, wild, uneducated thread.
Racism isn’t based on race, it’s based on power. That’s why America is still a race-based society in late 2024
German Perspective
I wouldn’t cast stones in glass houses.
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Here in Germany we are extensively educated about what happened in the 3rd Reich. It’s a big part about our education to learn and understand what horrible things happened and why they happened to make sure this never happens again. This kinda lead to the point where many Germans are deeply ashamed just for being a German (even though they’re quite far detached from what happened) and this is also a reason why you won’t find many German flags hanging here.
Yeah, we didn’t do that. At the end of the civil war, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson just kind of said “yeah we good now” and good portions of the US still hold Confederate views.
Hijacking your comment to add that a tom of Americans are ashamed to be American. That just happens to correlate with higher educated Americans. And there is currently a leading political party that celebrates the confederacy and is actively attempted to keep Americans from getting educated.
Nationilsm breeds effectient workers, and education hinders Nationalism.
@catloaf @open_mind To follow up on this, after the war there was a long and very successful propaganda campaign to whitewash the legacy of American slavery and its importance in the US civil war.[1] To this day, the Confederacy is heavily mythologized and their generals and leaders are lionized as brave and noble rather than what they were: defenders of brutal industrial slavery. You wouldn’t think a country would have statues of 150-year-old failed traitors outside state buildings, but we do. (They’re starting to come down but it has taken a literal century.)[2] There are many, many people from the south who will insist that the civil war was about the vague notion of “states’ rights” without being specific about what specific rights they wanted,[3] and that’s because this propaganda was embedded in the education system of half the country.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
[2] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1035004639/virginia-ready-to-remove-massive-robert-e-lee-statue-following-a-year-of-lawsuit
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZB2ftCl2VkEdit: Links
And to this day the Confederate flag is viewed by many as acceptable (“it’s part of our culture”). Can you imagine flying a Nazi flag in modern Germany?
I’m sorry but what is making you think social stereotypes in the US are not prevalent for the same reasons social stereotypes are prevalent in Germany?
Like I mentioned in my post I’m not at all trying to downplay any of the racism that also still exists in Germany. To me and other Germans I know who even lived in America it just seems that Americans overly focus on ethnicity and these stereotypes linked to that on a daily basis that’s dividing these people to a bigger extent than in Germany.
Maybe I’m wrong here and my personal experience might be different from yours but I would love to understand more generally about this topic in a scientific way. That’s why I asked this here.
So correct me if I’m wrong but please be thoughtful and fair in your answers.
Private prisons are profitable.
A big part of it is that Europe in general is a lot more homogeneous than North America. Replace black with Muslim and you’ll probably see a lot of “American” racism/xenophobia around you.
The biggest pockets of prejudice in the US seem to be the most homogenous. Homogeneous white Christian culture does seem to lead to racism, antisemitism, and a general dislike of progressives. It’s easy to convince yourself what “others” must be like when you’ve never met one and have always been taught bad things about them.
My dad is Jewish and lived briefly in Arizona in the '70s. People actually asked - with a straight fucking face! - to see his horns. Because that’s the stereotype they grew up hearing and never thought to question it.
I’m white. I mostly grew up in central Jersey in the '80s & '90s in a pretty diverse area, with a mix of blue and white collar. My school district was about 45% white (about 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 Jewish), 45% Black, and the rest were mostly Hispanic and Asian (largely Filipino and Vietnamese). I never heard a white person say the N word. My best friend in grade school was Black, and that wasn’t unusual in any way. We all liked R&B and that was the majority of what was played at school dances. Black History Month was taken very seriously and concepts in race and racial sensitivity were taught all the time (not just February). They did not flinch away from teaching about how horrific slavery was. Over the course of about a week, we watched Roots in the auditorium in Junior High (and little me, who loved TNG, was so excited to see Levar Burton, and absolutely wrecked after watching it). We discussed Rodney King & the LA riots, we talked about the OJ Simpson trial. Anyway my point was that we were steeped in racial awareness, both historic and present-day, and there was very little conflict along racial lines.
The summer before junior year, we moved to a white-ass upper-middle class suburb of Philly, where my new high school had about 3,000 kids (roughly 1,000 each in grades 10, 11, & 12), and there were about 5 Black kids total. I don’t remember there being any non-white kids in any of my classes. None of our classes taught anything about race, and Black History Month wasn’t even mentioned. And in my first week of school there, waiting at the bus stop, all the white boys were trying to look cool by using the N word constantly, just absolutely casually. I was horrified, because to me this was such an awful thing to say, I couldn’t understand why they were so comfortable saying it. Everything they said about Black people was based on an offensively cartoonish stereotype. And then I realized those guys had probably never even met a Black person, so Black folks were an abstract idea to them rather than actual people.
Anyway this has turned into a novel, but I thought it was an interesting microcosm. We need a strong program of racial awareness and history taught to kids throughout their education. What worries me is places like Florida trying to remove slavery from history curricula for K-12. That will cause ignorance, which eventually leads to hatred or contempt.
Of course, there are so many more aspects of race relations and generational disparity, but I don’t have the mental energy to address them right now.
It’s easy to convince yourself what “others” must be like when you’ve never met one and have always been taught bad things about them.
Some of the most vocally racist people I ever met (in rural Oklahoma, which I’m sure surprises no one) had a black neighbor that they were very good friends with. It defies understanding.
Yea unfortunately there is way too much across the world. I hope it will become better. I and my family at least don’t care about someone’s religion or what country they migrated from and I don’t personally know one who does so that’s a good thing.
OP: tell us your opinions about the Roma (aka - Gypsies).
Like I said this is not what this was meant to be for. I was looking for some educated explanations of the matter from an objective/scientific perspective to also widen my horizon on the matter. I don’t want a bate or finger pointing here.
That’s the point though. What’s an educated explanation for why it exists in Germany as well? Or France. Or Britain.
It’s because many people are insular and afraid and need someone to blame everything on.
I’m not trying to blame anyone here. Just want to understand including understanding my own country of course.
People one might call “black” make up roughly 12% of the population of the USA but just 0.5% of the population of Germany. Furthermore (and this shouldn’t be surprising after centuries of repression) the black population of the USA is, statistically speaking, doing a lot worse than the rest of the country.
(Population numbers are from Wikipedia.)
Thus, from a German point of view, black people are rare individuals. From an American point of view, black people are a large, distinct subpopulation and it’s easy for a person looking for a reason to reinforce his racist beliefs about them to find it.
Also (and this is is conjecture) I suspect that Germans outside the far right may be unusually reluctant to stereotype minorities, for obvious reasons. In that sense, Germany rather than the USA may be the outlier, but the problems in the USA are going to be particularly visible because the USA is such a huge presence in global culture and because the different groups in the USA are easy to distinguish while the ones in many other countries look and act the same as far as an outsider can tell.
I wonder if there have been strong efforts of American politics and society to get rid of these stereotypes and gain equality for everyone.
Of course, and stereotypes are not tolerated in many contexts. For example, I’m a white-collar worker and I’m pretty sure that I would have serious problems at every job I ever had if I said or did something racist at work (or even outside of work if it became sufficiently public).
Of course, and stereotypes are not tolerated in many contexts. For example, I’m a white-collar worker and I’m pretty sure that I would have serious problems at every job I ever had if I said or did something racist at work (or even outside of work if it became sufficiently public).
This depends heavily on where in the US you live/work. In the more conservative rural areas racism is tolerated so long as you’re not screaming it from the rooftops or wearing it on your sleeve. I have the appearance of someone who most would assume is very conservative so people feel far too comfortable being total racist shitbags around me.
That is a good point (although it seems like dark skinned population in Germany is closer to 1 percent so it’s probably 1/100 in Germany and 12/100 in America). But I think it’s noteworthy that Germany also has large numbers of migrant population and a big percentage of people are from the middle east who also have different features but even a quite different religion being the Islam (seems like Muslims make up about 7% of the population) and people here don’t really make a big thing out of whether they’re ethnicity is Arab or German or if their religion is Islam or Christianity. Although there’s a growing population being against them I think the general consensus is that Germany is very open for migration and we take many refugees. About 17% of the German population so almost 2 in 10 people are first-generation immigrants and in America it’s only 13% (and soon properly way less since it seems like they will mass deport illegal immigrants?? That btw seems crazy to me but I don’t wanna get political). About 55% of the Muslims also have German citizenship and many of them lived here for multiple generations.
But I appreciate that stereotypes are not tolerated in some American jobs, that’s a good start.
Addressing the education portion of your question, I grew up in the American South in the 1980s-90s, and I learned plenty about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow in school. I recognize this is a single data point, but am pretty sure these are widely taught. I also don’t really hear anyone calling for a return to slavery or Jim Crow, so this education seems to have successfully imbued our culture with a sense that these are bad things.
I think your overall question is answered somewhat by the fundamental demographics of each country. What percentage of Germans today are ethnically German? A lot. In the US, our racial mix is much more fragmented, to the point where racial minorities have thriving subcultures that some people don’t view as extolling “traditional American values,” whatever those are. But these subcultures are increasingly visible and powerful, leading to resentment among many who view their culture, that of “traditional American values,” as losing power.
The single largest ethnic group in the US are people of German descent (I’m one of them), with well over 40 million people, and these people along with people of British descent are largely the ones driving this “traditional American values” bullshit. People of Irish descent used to be subject to serious racism in the US in the early 20th century, but have since been fully accepted into the dominant white culture and many now also participate in white racism against Black and Hispanic people.
Everything is still segregated in the Southeastern USA. I can’t really say how much is done because of actual direct discrimination or otherwise, but there are separate mostly black and mostly white areas in most cities.
The States of the USA are much more autonomous than it may seem from the outside. The southeastern USA is the Republican stronghold. Republicans have long acted like a criminal organization with gerrymandering that minimizes the votes of black and educated communities. If you look at the map of average credit scores of citizens in the USA, you will see the Republican regions as if looking at the political map. Republicans are toxic misers when funding government. The police in the Southeast are poorly equipped, poorly paid, and poorly trained. It is a job that attracts some of the worst kinds of people, and when they are sent into poorer areas with people that have a slightly different culture than themselves, they tend to act stupidly.
Republicans have played the long game of ignorance. Americans are poorly educated across the board, and especially in the Southeastern USA. Uneducated people are more easily manipulated into populism or by platonic sophistry. There is not a lot of social mobility in the South. I’m from Alabama originally, and live in California now. These two may as well be completely different countries. Their access to information is different, as are the culture, and opportunities for the average person. The average Californian is making over double what the average is in the Southeast. I’ve never been, but from what I do know, the difference between CA and the Southeast is maybe like Germany and Hungary. The base GDP numbers of CA are skewed a bit by how much rural area there is and how population is distributed. In Southern California, life in the suburbs requires around $120k per year to own a low end home and pay the bills. In the same class of suburbs in Atlanta Georgia (largest Southeastern city), you need between $60k-$75k for the same home and lifestyle. The primary driver of this cost is simply employment opportunities.
The Southeastern USA is our primary backwards ignorant backwater region where people cling to radicalized religion and are deeply conservative due to isolationist ideologies. These people hate everything unfamiliar and different both regionally and abroad. They can barely read as a skill, never read for recreation or self growth, and only ever work and watch whatever garbage is on Fox on the TV.
The African American community can be just as bad about harboring racism too. I went to a University prep highschool that was 90% black and was a special institution designed to help uplift the black community. Of course it was a largely privately funded “magnet school” because Republicans never fund such programs. I experienced many racists in school as one of the few white students. Most of my friends were black. I dated a black girl too, not that it mattered to me. It is complicated, but in general the black community is deeply traumatized. It is largely due to ongoing incompetent mismanagement. Incompetent government is good business for the ultra rich, and so they fund it, while the uneducated elements of society are not smart enough to see the big picture and vote for change.
The USA is actually a pretty shitty place for anyone of lower class. Things like immigration are harped on because it perpetuates the delusion that everyone wants to be here when that is not really the case unless you’re in a hell hole like Venezuela.
That is such an odd statement, or maybe Florida is an outlier? On my block there is a mix of people, I went to schools that were forcefully integrated, the friend groups of my children are diverse. I grew up with friends who were a mix too. There were certainly cliques and self-segregating but not everyone, and now it’s even less frequent.
My ex, who came down here from Michigan, said that he went to “the white school” up north, that in his city the schools ended up segregated because they were neighborhood schools and the neighborhoods were segregated. So even in his high school he said there were 2 black kids and a few Indian and 99.5 % white kids. He was so uncomfortable down here because we are all mixed and he ended up so racist.
I haven’t lived up north but my experience with the northerners who move down here supports this, they all come from more homogeneous backgrounds than those of us who grew up here. They all think they aren’t racist until they live in this more heterogenous environment.
Yeah Florida spans some interesting exceptions. The Southeast is more a reference to the old Plantation South. The panhandle is, or thirty years ago-used to be, dominated by the same demographic. Or rather, dominated by the vacationing youth of the group. The cities of the peninsula are each quite different. Naples and Saint Augustine had something that felt like a segregated whites-only community feel. I’ve heard similar racist stereotypes of Hispanics and Cubans in Miami and Orlando. However all of these do not seem to have the generationally entrenched feel and tension of places like Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Eastern Texas. I’ve only spent a few weeks total in each of those cities within Florida mostly in my childhood and early teens, so my perception is only so deep.
Personally, I miss the unique black cultural community I grew up with mostly around Chattanooga and Huntsville. There was this collective togetherness that I experienced, with lots of potlucks and lively gregarious people that brought out the best in others, and complemented my introverted nature without feeling intrusive. I felt like the accepted outsider that was welcomed to exist on my terms, and maybe even appreciated.
The one time I spend a week exploring the Keys, I felt like I was in a really openly accepting area and never encountered racism.
I traveled with my old man during my summers in highschool and then for a year after. He worked on industrial controls installations where we’d go stay in an area for 2-3 weeks at a time. I’ve actually been to a lot of places and stayed there in unique ways but still hotel life, just not full tourist like experiences. Plus fam vacationed in Florida and I have fam in Orlando.
E: people that down vote instead of replying–please block me entirely. I do not value you or wish to interact with you at all under any circumstances. I really don’t care who you are or what interactions we have had in the past. I find the rudeness adolescent, incompetent, childish, immoral, destructive, egomaniacal, and toxic. You have an impact on my mental health as someone in social isolation from physical disability, and I despise you for doing that. Being anonymously negative to a stranger in this way is psychotic behavior.
I can vouch for the segregated aspects of the south East. As someone who lives in the north east, I went vacationing to Florida for 2 months back in August, and the entire mentality between anyone who was not white was a drastic whiplash compared to the minor instances that are seen in the north.
unfortunately the ideology is so ingrained into normal living culture, that when I confronted my family who I saw doing it as well they didn’t even realize they were doing it and in most cases couldn’t seperate capability from the color of the person’s skin. It’s just something that they did. Not right but when everyone around you has the same ideology you tend to get blinded by it.
Being said it’s not like it used to be, it’s not like it’s actually written down like it used to be with color/white bathrooms and such, but that doesn’t stop psychological discrimination and prejudice.
I even got gawked at for talking to a groundskeeper when I was going for a walk, it was so unreal.
The fuck are you talking about…have you ever been to the Southeast? Segregated it is not. The southeast is probably one of the least segregated parts of the usa.
Could you elaborate on this comment? Seems like the person before you went to a mostly black school/college and so has experienced being part of a segregated society/community. Are there areas that are less segregated or not at all? For context I am from the UK, where we have some integration but still quite high levels of segregation; I live in the southeast, in an area which is over 95pc white British, but there are other areas with much higher populations of other races/nationalities (Bradford, in the north midlands, is around 25pc Pakistani, and only a little over 50pc white British).
Did you/do you live in an area that isn’t or doesn’t feel segregated?
I grew up and live still in what’s considered the south. I have also lived up north. The south was bad during jim crow and the forced segregation. After the gov put a stop to that shit, the south desegregated to a point that it is heavily mixed now. HBS (historical black schools) exist but they’re not some segregated deal, it’s more for the history side and scholarships for people who can’t afford the school. Yes there are areas that are more black or white, but this has nothing to do with some sort of force segregation. I went to school in a rural area, I am a minority and played football on a heavily mixed team. Coaches where black/white/latino. My teachers were black and white, it was a completely normal thing growing up. Contrast that with my wife who is from the EU…she saw her first black person when she immigrated here to the USA when she was a kid. As I said before, the south was very segregated but that was 70+ years ago now. The forced integration by the gov. helped everyone to drop the black vs white here in the south. Is there still racism here? Sure, where isn’t there racism? But it’s nowhere near what some people seem to think it is.
Very interesting read, gives a lot of perspective. Thanks!
