As non-American, it's a strange feeling to see all these discussions about racism. It took me a while to understand that the whole perception of the issue is just completely different.
I’ve lived here for ~10 years and I’m still learning. The base realization is that if you come from a mostly homogenous (or openly racist a la apartheid) background, you simply can’t understand how American style racism works.
In my home country we have so few black and asian people that exact numbers can’t be reported in the census because it would be considered personal information. Sure we have racism but it’s purely of the “fear of new/unknown” kind. Anything more than that we learned from american media.
A better analogy, if you come from such a background, might be to replace racism with ethnicism. We’re really good at ethnicism in Europe in a way that’s a lot more similar to how america does racism.
Its not quite that. The US is also different from other countries with large non-white minorities. I think you are right that race, ethnicity and other things (such as caste) are much the same thing: you are classified by some group you are born into, and you and your descendants cannot move out of. However it is also different in every culture.
It look me a long time to understand how the US is different from countries I know (which are definitely not homogenous, though some are fairly openly racist). I could see race was much more ingrained in the culture compared to the UK, but did not understand why. The insight for me (mostly thanks to Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste) is that race in American is a caste distinction: it is a hierarchy rather than just hostility to the outsider.
I would posit it’s not a caste system similar to India’s caste system or old school feudalism. Being an outsider definitely plays a part for instance the treatment of Italian immigrants. In my experience if you’re part of a certain group you might or will get mistreated but if you’re part of that group and also an outsider oof you’re in for one tortured existence. Which is kind of contradictory because the USA is one of the few places that openly welcomes outsiders (like you don’t see migrants trying to go to China or Russia) but at the same time if you’re deemed persona non grata like for whatever reason the land will mess with your life, health and so on unlike any other place
How is it not a caste system? A caste system can ALSO be hostile to outsiders on an ethnic or religious basis (plenty of examples of both in South Asia!) in addition to the caste system.
Feudalism is not a caste system. In a feudal system people can move up and down to some extent, and over generations people can move a lot. It was possible for people to marry to at least some extent. There is no notion of pure blood or pollution.
In a caste system, your "worth" is decided at birth based on what caste system you are born into, and your opportunities and relationships are determined by that.
The US has some of the highest rates of interracial marriages, relationships, etc. in the world. Mobility in America is driven by socioeconomic class, not race, and gender plays a heavy role in educational success in some races (more than race itself), but not others, for various historical reasons.
In order to cast U.S. racial relations into a type "caste" system, you'd have to stretch the definition of caste so thin that it wouldn't have any meaning.
It was historically a caste system though, especially in the South up to the sixties, and there are remnants of that. No doubt it is a weakened caste system, and hopefully dying one, but it still seems present.
Americans seem to still, at the least, attach a lot of importance to race, and to classifying people by race. It is seen as fundamental to who people are: a lot of Americans who seem fine with someone self-identifying their gender find it far harder to accept someone self-identifying their race. Why not? A lot of people report assumptions are made on the basis of race. In a lot of conversations I have with Americans about race seem to assume that people are likely to be overtly treated differently on the basis of their appearance.
I do not know the US so maybe I am out of date or have read the wrong things but I find it a lot harder to understand the importance Americans (not just racists, but people trying to be anti-racist too) attach to race if I am wrong.
> maybe I am out of date or have read the wrong things
No, I think you have a better grasp on it than most people outside the US. Americans really want to believe we don’t have a caste system, because it’s antithetical to our origin story and what we feel is true about ourselves, but we absolutely do. So if you listen to us talk, you’ll think we don’t have a caste system. If you watch our actions, you’ll see we still do.
If I were to wildly speculate, I might guess that many Americans think of gender as being about presentation and experience, while "race" is almost entirely about shared experience - which, yes, is often informed by reactions to one's appearance, or lack thereof, but that's not the identifying characteristic.
So it comes across as similarly distasteful to someone claiming to be "long lost Uncle Eddie", because they saw your family through the glass at a holiday and liked what they saw - since you weren't here for a billion shared little experiences, and there's no claim that you were from the same grandparents or similar, it rings hollow and like you want something from it.
Interesting idea. How much shared experience is there though - for example between poor and affluent people of the same race? What about immigrant groups who look similar but have very different culture and experiences? I cannot imagine an affluent black African immigrant will have much in common with a poor black American. I know that (in the UK, but it would be just as true in the US) that I do not have much shared experience with other people who look like me (South Asian to Western eyes) but come from different cultures types of area (urban vs rural is a big difference) and family backgrounds.
If what America has is a caste system, then the UK has a caste system. And France. And China. And the entire world. Because to make what America has into caste system, you render the term meaningless.
A caste system is s social hierarchy that determines who you can socialize with, what you can learn, and what you can do for living. That's not how race works in America.
I think with things like this people lie to themselves as well. You might say "I am OK with it" but not be 100% comfortable but want to avoid thinking of yourself as racist.
Oh we have quite a bit of racism in Europe too, just go to eastern part. People are not so vocal about it, unless in 'their' circles.
Sure, its all mixed together with fear of different religions, xenophobia which I would say is still dominant force, and its targeted way more on black people rather than east asians, but these days its there, even on places that had 0 of it due to literally 0 exposure to other races few decades ago. I personally saw first black person in person as a teenager for example.
Big parts of societies are quite radicalized if you care to look closely enough, which many don't and consider Europe some form of uniform hippie paradise. But then you can't escape the reality of ie string of victories of more or less extreme right winders all getting the vote 'to stop immigration'. Whole Brexit was fueled mainly by such xenophobia, it would be insignificant fart in the wind without this.
My personal opinion is that before countries like Germany decided to allow unregulated immigration en masse and try to push rest of EU in same direction without asking, serious discussions should have taken place for a long time and explained to common folks why, in what form, for how long, how will it affect them, how will state protect them etc. Instead, at least eastern part went through shock therapy and hence often seen kneejerk reaction of refusing everything.
Europeans are proud of hating gypsies, we just don't bring this up around Americans because of how poorly they react when we show them our point of view. Racism and pedophilia are two most sensitive topics for Americans, who feel like they're on the holy mission to free the world from these two evils.
It’s possible to criticize culture without being racist or resorting to virulent, gleeful hate. Have you met any actual Romani aside from the occasional panhandler? You’d think Europeans would welcome the ones that try to escape their culture, and yet they face roadblocks and discrimination along every step of the way. Instead of hate, why not try a little empathy or even pity for people born into unfortunate circumstances? Your mentality is despicable, period, even without the American racial lens. (And for what it’s worth, I was born in Europe and am very much familiar with this bullshit first hand.)
So feel free to continue nodding and smiling. We can see right through it. Rest assured that it reflects far more poorly on you than the Romani, whatever their flaws may be.
So you just smile and nod, but inside you think "American racism may be bad, but our racism is true and based on evidence"?
I mean, look, if you want to condemn Romani culture, sure, I can at least listen. (There are some in the US who think "all cultures are equally good"; I am not among them.) But if you want to condemn Romani because of their race or ethnicity, and say there's "some truth to the racism", then I'm going to condemn you as a racist. And to the degree that's part of your culture, I'm going to condemn your culture.
This is also why I'm very skeptical of modern progressivism. It's not like people became more aware, because they still have a set of beliefs they don't question, it's just that those beliefs changed. Which means that they might, and probably will, change again in the future. If it took 60 years to go from "racism is best" to "racism is the worst" without any fundamental change to how we create our social norms, then it's not outrageous to claim that within another 60 years we might go back to "racism is best".
You know, PG said you can disagree with downvotes but if someone says something that they honestly believe and not just to make controversy I think I'd rather upvote them so I can see the post.
