The Culture War

[padraig (u.s.)]

"migrants with a non-western origin"

right, and even that measurement (not policy) isn't racial per se - it's based on immigrants and West/non-West, rather than race

redlining is illegal here and has been for a while (tho not as long as you'd think/hope) btw

in fact one of the most despicable practices leading up to the subprime crisis was "reverse redlining" - targeting POC with predatory loans, often on worse terms than would be offered to white customers

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

anyway, my sense is that yes, Europe is importing some of the American culture war, as it has been importing all facets of American culture heavily since at least WWII

but that's on both sides - Europe is also importing militarization of police, Fox News media + view of reality, anti-intellectualism, rhetoric, etc

further, surely a large element of European protests is solidarity

whether it's "justified" in a purely risk/reward sense during pandemic is hard to answer definitively - clearly it was in the United States, Europe is less clear

 

[entertainment]

the worst example of explicit political racism we've got I think is our camps for rejected asylum seekers. absolutely reprehensible conditions, bordering torture, if not crossing that border.

 

[version]

anyway, my sense is that yes, Europe is importing some of the American culture war, as it has been importing all facets of American culture heavily since at least WWII

but that's on both sides - Europe is also importing militarization of police, Fox News media + view of reality, anti-intellectualism, rhetoric, etc

further, surely a large element of European protests is solidarity

whether it's "justified" in a purely risk/reward sense during pandemic is hard to answer definitively - clearly it was in the United States, Europe is less clear

We've got plenty of right-wing libertarian lobbying groups who refuse to reveal the source of their funding too. I'm assuming they're connected to similar groups in the US.

 

[version]

One of my big fears re: Brexit was a vote to leave would be used to push for further deregulation and closer ties with the US. It seemed inevitable.

 

[version]

Cummings apparently wants the ban on political advertising on TV lifted and our own Fox-style channel set up...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Europe's more vocally racist than the US, but less systemically racist is a difficult one to contend with

actually it makes perfect sense, and jives with my personal experience

Europeans - outside of a few cities/areas - have significantly less personal experience interacting with or living near large numbers of POC

ignorance breeds individual bigotry - some of the most outlandish anti-black racist talk I've ever heard came from Mexicans (Mexico, unlike much of Latin America has very few black people)

otoh no European country has had a comparable % racial minority, so there's never been systemic racism at a comparable level

the defining factor in Europe is nationality (and historically class), not race. there's some crossover at the far right where you get into nationality in a volksich sense.

 

[entertainment]

The idea put forward in some of the comments in that Reddit thread that Europe's more vocally racist than the US, but less systemically racist is a difficult one to contend with. I dunno how true that is and it feels an incredibly clumsy and odd position to take.

Of course there's less systemic racism because we haven't had the generations of racial oppression that allow such structures to institutionalise.

With that, of course there's also a lot less awareness of racial issues, leading to what we call 'hygge-racisme'. A case mostly of the older generations using racially insensitive slurs, casually racist comments and jokes. That stuff is very wide-spread and I'd be hard pressed to find any of my friends parent who don't participate in some degree in that.

And then of course we also have the far right nationalist parties, some gaining a lot of support these years.

 

[version]

some of the most outlandish anti-black racist talk I've ever heard came from Mexicans

An Indian friend of mine in the US once told me most of the racist abuse he'd faced had come from other minorities.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

A case mostly of the older generations using racially insensitive slurs, casually racist comments and jokes

right, he said it better. much more casual individual racism, no systemic racial oppression because there was never a need for it.

the great fear of Europeans isn't never been black people, Arabs etc, it's Muslims

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

whereas the U.S. has deeply entrenched systemic racism but we're far more individually sensitive to racial issues, coding, etc

 

[entertainment]

Yes, the far right rhetoric over here is mostly inspired by The Great Replacement theory, politicians warning how muslims will take over in numbers.

 

[version]

the defining factor in Europe is nationality (and historically class), not race. there's some crossover at the far right where you get into nationality in a volksich sense.

I've heard this is something of a hurdle for the American far-right. That they view white people as a homogeneous group and don't always account for say English and Polish people taking issue with each other.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

right, whereas the demographic fear here, where it exists, is traditionally Hispanic and cultural-linguistic rather than purely racial

our far right has sometimes imported the European version in re Muslims but demographically it's simply unrealistic

 

[version]

It's probably worth taking into account the strength of Christianity in the US in comparison to the UK too. It's our state religion, but it has far less sway here than it does over there.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

they view white people as a homogeneous group

like I said, in Europe division is by nationality, sometimes language, culture and/or religion as proxy for nationality ("peoplehood")

when Europeans immigrated here, where race is the defining factor, they all became simply "white"

there is a book literally called How the Irish Became White that details the process. I read it a very long time ago but I recall it as pretty good.

 

[droid]

there is a book literally called How the Irish Became White that details the process. I read it a very long time ago but I recall it as pretty good.

Short answer, we beat the shit out of other minorities until we got promoted.

 

[WashYourHands]

It was better in the Neolithic, apart from the healthcare.

 

[Mr. Tea]

there is a book literally called How the Irish Became White that details the process. I read it a very long time ago but I recall it as pretty good.

Did you ever watch Boardwalk Empire? One of the best things about it was the way it portrayed the racial hierarchy in America a hundred years ago. It goes without saying that upper-class WASP types were at the top of the tree, and black people at the bottom, but in between were more recent immigrants from Europe, including many Irish - who were regarded as somehow in between blacks and 'proper' whites by the WASPs, even as some of them rose to great prominence (like Nucky Thompson, the main character) - and Italians and Poles (many of them Jewish, to complicate it further). And even among the black community, there were levels based on fraction of white ancestry, so that Chalky, one of Nucky's employees/gang associates, actually resents his educated and well-spoken mixed-race wife, being a very dark-skinned former farm labourer himself. He even has hang-ups about the relative privilege of his own kids - "It's clear who's the field-n****r in this house" - who physically take after their mother and are also well-spoken, since they go to a good school thanks to the money he earns under Nucky's patronage.

Probably not news to anyone who knows a bit about America's social history but I thought it was handled really well.

 

[version]

Is it a good show in general? It's something I've considered giving a go, but can never really get excited enough about to bother.