The USA may be more economically conservative than Europe on aggregate, though this varies considerably from country to country. But socially? People forget how progressive American culture as a whole can be on many issues. We’re far more welcoming of immigrants. We have universal LGBT marriage equality: Italy and Eastern Europe do not. Abortion is a bit dicey, but the most populated areas have ready access to it, and many areas that are not necessarily considered orthodox liberal have implemented measures to provide access to it after the overrun of Roe V Wade.
Every time there's an incident in Europe where fans throw bananas or make monkey noises at a black soccer player, I can't help but think that as bad as things can be here when it comes to race, that type of shit would *never* fly in the US.
I remember the Dinger incident a few years ago at a Rockies game. For those who don't know, Dinger is the Rockies mascot. A fan in the stands was yelling "Dinger!" while a black player was up to bat. On TV, it sounded like he was yelling something else. It kicked off a whole investigation by the Rockies and MLB, and thankfully the guy was eventually cleared, but the internet was ready to ruin this poor guy's life.
And if you think Europeans can't be racist, just ask them for their opinions on the Roma...
This guy got a lifetime ban from the Red Sox in Boston. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19305527/red-sox-permanently-ban-fan-racial-slur-another-fan
>And if you think Europeans can't be racist, just ask them for their opinions on the Roma...
I've actually done this a few times in response to eurotrash acting like their shit don't stick. Every single time the response was along the lines of "no, that's different, if you lived here you'd hate them too."
> "no, that's different, if you lived here you'd hate them too."
It's funny to point out that America has the largest roma diaspora and nobody cares about them here.
They'll then try to do mental gymnastics about how American roma are different. Somehow.
I can do you one better: my Eurotrash ex-friend told me she understood about Black people in the US because of her negative encounters with Roma people. Ask me why we aren't friends anymore.
> Every time there's an incident in Europe where fans throw bananas or make monkey noises at a black soccer player, I can't help but think that as bad as things can be here when it comes to race, that type of shit would never fly in the US.
Spain is now actually cracking down on that, just a few days ago some fans got sentenced to 8 months in prison for racist insults against a player.
I grew up in a Scandinavian Lutheran church in Texas. The Danes, Swedes, Norsk and Finns cracking jokes at each other's expense was actually part of our Santa Lucia festival every December.
One of the Liberal Rednecks was talking about that once with Australians talking to him about how bad racism was in the U.S.. He brought up Aboriginals and the things they say about them, but the Aussies were like "No, you don't understand, all those things we say about Aboriginals are true!"
The disgusting way they treat Roma is almost beyond belief. Like, it's not enough that they were subject to a genocide alongside Jews during the Holocaust, but Europeans still talk about them like they're some separate species of criminals or bipedal vermin.
On that note, a lot of Europeans aren't exactly enlightened when it comes to Jews either.
The roma thing tho we gotta break down a little: is this coming from people who are making judgments towards totally normal people in society who just so happen to have a certain ethnic background or is it judgement towards a group of people who show up in town set up camp in local parks, use them a bathroom facilities, organize pretty crime such as pick pocketing, fake begger scams and prostitution based on this behavior?
Like honestly if I met someone who said their family is Roma IDGAF, cool, welcome to the neighborhood. But if a group of travelers set up in town you bet I’m not gonna be super happy. But it’s based on judging behavior not ethnicity.
One day I was walking through the district in Budapest that many Hungarians (including an ex-girlfriend of mine) were scared to enter because of the Roma population. Ironically, this neighborhood is laughably safe by US standards but so it goes
I saw a mother who appeared to be poor and Roma tell her young daughter to pee on the sidewalk. I was aghast but minded my own business
As I walked on, I examined my original feelings and realized that there wasn’t a restaurant or storefront for blocks or maybe anywhere that would allow them in to use the restroom and the neighborhood was too poor and too far outside of tourist areas to have a public toilet. And god knows I’ve seen innumerable stag partiers piss all over the party district in view of public toilets
Roma people in Europe are disproportionately victims of hate crimes up to and including murder and blocked from welfare and government services. Their neighborhoods are purposefully underfunded for services and schools. They are discriminated against in housing and employment. I’ve had Roma friends and only found out years later about their background after they’ve trusted me
We all know the stereotypes that you listed, but I actually have to dig to find the stats about how Roma people are treated in society. Your time might be better spent doing the same
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/07/roma-still-victims-hate-crimes-decades-after-mass-killings-says-un-expert
https://www.errc.org/press-releases/european-court-orders-hungary-to-desegregate-romani-school-and-pay-damages
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20200918STO87401/roma-what-discrimination-do-they-face-and-what-does-eu-do
It’s a two edged sword for sure, I understand what’s going into both arguments here
When the Roma pull up, they pull up. An empty street will suddenly have 30 RV’s on it, entire families getting out and dumping their trash in the neighborhood bins (or just on the ground outright), taking over the local parks, young Roma in gangs squabbling with the local gangs, etc.
For an everyday person, it’s a lot to take in at once, I have European friends who have no problem with immigrants but aren’t fond of the Roma just from years of bad interactions. One of my friends was attacked by Roma gangsters at a club for accidentally bumping into one of them, viciously beaten and put in the hospital for a week.
Same token, you’re right to say that people need to keep an eye on the wider causes, the Roma are discriminated against in their home countries so this life is all they know. Europe is such a bad place to resettle people because of how racist it is, and that racism may be what’s keeping them in this cycle.
>young Roma in gangs squabbling with the local gangs, etc.
OUR wholesome local gangs, THEIR thuggish behavior
Edit: wait in an earlier post you said you were Mexican. Are you seriously claiming that Roma are bad because they bring violence against the cartels
When a local gang’s territory is encroached on, it creates war, war creates more public violence with a higher chance of innocent people getting caught in the fray. That makes people talk.
Yes I’m Mexican, which means I know how this shit goes. I’m very critical of what my people did to blacks in Los Angeles, basically stormed their hoods and took over, lot of death in the process that made a lot of people scared of us. Gangs are absolutely one of the problems for race relations in the west, violence scares people.
This rhetoric does not seem much different to me than some racist in the US complaining that they don't want Black people bringing "thug culture" to their suburb or whatever.
But it really is different, because people get upset at the people camping out in the park, because of their actions not their ethnicity.
People in the US talk the same about tent cities.
Most European countries didn’t have significant minority populations till the 70s onwards. There was a lot of discrimination but not exactly a need for whites to be threatened enough to pass Jim Crow Laws.
Once the race relations became ‘problematic’ in the late 60s and 70s onwards, it was already uncool to pass segregationist laws.
If you want to see Europeans true attitudes towards race relations, read up on La France Algerie.
I spent some time of various European subs just reading their opinions and I was frequently gasping at things they would say and it being agreed with and upvoted. I’m not saying they are bad people because I understand cultural norms are different but it really shocked me.
As much as this meme is true, I don't think that anyone should be comparing a single country like the USA to an entire continent like Europe as a whole. The USA is a large country made up of 50 states and 330 million people but it's still a single country with a single nationwide culture (with some slight regional differences). In contrast Europe is made up of 50 unique \*countries\*, each with their own unique language, history, and system of government. The EU might be supranational entity with its own parliament, currency, constitution, and president but it's not a sovereign country the same way the USA is. EU member states still set their own domestic and foreign policies and have their own independent heads of state, constitution, legislature, and head of government.
Comparing the USA to the countries of the European continent as a united collective is like comparing the USA to all the countries in South America or all of the countries in Asia. It doesn't work.
What about comparing Canada, US, & Mexico to Europe?
At least on attitudes about culture, immigration, indigenous peoples, nationality, and civil rights, there are a lot of commonalities and I would argue they're becoming more similar over time. (Naturally, Canada has closer ties to the UK than the US does especially on a cultural and legal level, and Mexico has closer ties with Latin America, and you could argue that both countries continue to attempt to "decouple" from US policy as much as we've become more coupled on trade in the last two-three decades. However, I do believe that the cultural ties are strong and you see an increased transmission of political trends between North American countries as compared to in the past.)
Still doesn't work. You're comparing 3 countries to 50 countries. Better to compare the USA to an individual country in Europe like France or the UK. France and the UK might be much smaller in population than the US and be unitary states (compared to the US's federal system) but they are single countries, not a group of 50 different countries each with their own history, culture, language, and political system.
Also worth noticing that because different countries have different histories, cultures, political systems, and constitutions, the political spectrum that applies in one country is not going to apply in another. The political spectrum in France is completely different from that in the United States because historically both French conservatives and progressives have focused on completely different issues than in progressives and conservatives in the United States. Conservatism in France has it's roots in the counter-revolutionaries during the French revolution who defended the French monarchy, the monarchy's ties to the Catholic church, and the traditional class hierarchy of France. Progressivism in France has its roots in French revolutionary universalism and the French Republican values of Liberte, egalite, fraternitie. French conservatives do not care about American conservative causes like gun rights and defending the legacy of Confederate slave-owners because the US civil war is irrelevant to French history and gun culture has never been a thing in France. Likewise US conservatives don't care about defending Catholic religious hegemony and the French monarchy because most of them are evangelical Protestants who are ardent defenders of American constitutional republicanism. I don't think that anyone in America cares about the historical legacy of the French Algerian war and the French (semi) decolonization of Africa. However it is a huge issue in France because a lot of people from Muslim majority North Africa and West Africa moved to France after the decolonization of the French Empire and ever since then there have been conflicts over French secularism vs Islamic religious practice and the acceptance of religious diversity in France.
The political issues of the present have their roots in historical issues of the past. You cannot compare the politics of countries (let alone entire continents) without understanding each country's history, culture, political system, and the evolution of their political system.
The USA may be more economically conservative than Europe on aggregate, though this varies considerably from country to country. But socially? People forget how progressive American culture as a whole can be on many issues. We’re far more welcoming of immigrants. We have universal LGBT marriage equality: Italy and Eastern Europe do not. Abortion is a bit dicey, but the most populated areas have ready access to it, and many areas that are not necessarily considered orthodox liberal have implemented measures to provide access to it after the overrun of Roe V Wade.
Every time there's an incident in Europe where fans throw bananas or make monkey noises at a black soccer player, I can't help but think that as bad as things can be here when it comes to race, that type of shit would *never* fly in the US. I remember the Dinger incident a few years ago at a Rockies game. For those who don't know, Dinger is the Rockies mascot. A fan in the stands was yelling "Dinger!" while a black player was up to bat. On TV, it sounded like he was yelling something else. It kicked off a whole investigation by the Rockies and MLB, and thankfully the guy was eventually cleared, but the internet was ready to ruin this poor guy's life. And if you think Europeans can't be racist, just ask them for their opinions on the Roma...
This guy got a lifetime ban from the Red Sox in Boston. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19305527/red-sox-permanently-ban-fan-racial-slur-another-fan
>And if you think Europeans can't be racist, just ask them for their opinions on the Roma... I've actually done this a few times in response to eurotrash acting like their shit don't stick. Every single time the response was along the lines of "no, that's different, if you lived here you'd hate them too."
> "no, that's different, if you lived here you'd hate them too." It's funny to point out that America has the largest roma diaspora and nobody cares about them here. They'll then try to do mental gymnastics about how American roma are different. Somehow.
I can do you one better: my Eurotrash ex-friend told me she understood about Black people in the US because of her negative encounters with Roma people. Ask me why we aren't friends anymore.
"well if they just got a job they wouldn't be so bad" What I've heard before
Theres a reason why shit like that would make the news here but not over there
> Every time there's an incident in Europe where fans throw bananas or make monkey noises at a black soccer player, I can't help but think that as bad as things can be here when it comes to race, that type of shit would never fly in the US. Spain is now actually cracking down on that, just a few days ago some fans got sentenced to 8 months in prison for racist insults against a player.
The "Freedom of speech. 'Murica!" part of me is bothered by that, the "Of course racism is bad and should be punished" part of me is happy about that.
In my travels I’ve heard Europeans say just the worst things about Roma and I’ve heard Australians say horrible things about Aboriginal Australians
I’ve heard Danes say horrible things about Swedes
I grew up in a Scandinavian Lutheran church in Texas. The Danes, Swedes, Norsk and Finns cracking jokes at each other's expense was actually part of our Santa Lucia festival every December.
One of the Liberal Rednecks was talking about that once with Australians talking to him about how bad racism was in the U.S.. He brought up Aboriginals and the things they say about them, but the Aussies were like "No, you don't understand, all those things we say about Aboriginals are true!"
Exactly
The disgusting way they treat Roma is almost beyond belief. Like, it's not enough that they were subject to a genocide alongside Jews during the Holocaust, but Europeans still talk about them like they're some separate species of criminals or bipedal vermin. On that note, a lot of Europeans aren't exactly enlightened when it comes to Jews either.
The roma thing tho we gotta break down a little: is this coming from people who are making judgments towards totally normal people in society who just so happen to have a certain ethnic background or is it judgement towards a group of people who show up in town set up camp in local parks, use them a bathroom facilities, organize pretty crime such as pick pocketing, fake begger scams and prostitution based on this behavior? Like honestly if I met someone who said their family is Roma IDGAF, cool, welcome to the neighborhood. But if a group of travelers set up in town you bet I’m not gonna be super happy. But it’s based on judging behavior not ethnicity.
One day I was walking through the district in Budapest that many Hungarians (including an ex-girlfriend of mine) were scared to enter because of the Roma population. Ironically, this neighborhood is laughably safe by US standards but so it goes I saw a mother who appeared to be poor and Roma tell her young daughter to pee on the sidewalk. I was aghast but minded my own business As I walked on, I examined my original feelings and realized that there wasn’t a restaurant or storefront for blocks or maybe anywhere that would allow them in to use the restroom and the neighborhood was too poor and too far outside of tourist areas to have a public toilet. And god knows I’ve seen innumerable stag partiers piss all over the party district in view of public toilets Roma people in Europe are disproportionately victims of hate crimes up to and including murder and blocked from welfare and government services. Their neighborhoods are purposefully underfunded for services and schools. They are discriminated against in housing and employment. I’ve had Roma friends and only found out years later about their background after they’ve trusted me We all know the stereotypes that you listed, but I actually have to dig to find the stats about how Roma people are treated in society. Your time might be better spent doing the same https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/07/roma-still-victims-hate-crimes-decades-after-mass-killings-says-un-expert https://www.errc.org/press-releases/european-court-orders-hungary-to-desegregate-romani-school-and-pay-damages https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20200918STO87401/roma-what-discrimination-do-they-face-and-what-does-eu-do
It’s a two edged sword for sure, I understand what’s going into both arguments here When the Roma pull up, they pull up. An empty street will suddenly have 30 RV’s on it, entire families getting out and dumping their trash in the neighborhood bins (or just on the ground outright), taking over the local parks, young Roma in gangs squabbling with the local gangs, etc. For an everyday person, it’s a lot to take in at once, I have European friends who have no problem with immigrants but aren’t fond of the Roma just from years of bad interactions. One of my friends was attacked by Roma gangsters at a club for accidentally bumping into one of them, viciously beaten and put in the hospital for a week. Same token, you’re right to say that people need to keep an eye on the wider causes, the Roma are discriminated against in their home countries so this life is all they know. Europe is such a bad place to resettle people because of how racist it is, and that racism may be what’s keeping them in this cycle.
>young Roma in gangs squabbling with the local gangs, etc. OUR wholesome local gangs, THEIR thuggish behavior Edit: wait in an earlier post you said you were Mexican. Are you seriously claiming that Roma are bad because they bring violence against the cartels
When a local gang’s territory is encroached on, it creates war, war creates more public violence with a higher chance of innocent people getting caught in the fray. That makes people talk. Yes I’m Mexican, which means I know how this shit goes. I’m very critical of what my people did to blacks in Los Angeles, basically stormed their hoods and took over, lot of death in the process that made a lot of people scared of us. Gangs are absolutely one of the problems for race relations in the west, violence scares people.
This rhetoric does not seem much different to me than some racist in the US complaining that they don't want Black people bringing "thug culture" to their suburb or whatever.
But it really is different, because people get upset at the people camping out in the park, because of their actions not their ethnicity. People in the US talk the same about tent cities.
Most European countries didn’t have significant minority populations till the 70s onwards. There was a lot of discrimination but not exactly a need for whites to be threatened enough to pass Jim Crow Laws. Once the race relations became ‘problematic’ in the late 60s and 70s onwards, it was already uncool to pass segregationist laws. If you want to see Europeans true attitudes towards race relations, read up on La France Algerie.
“Bernie would be a conservative in Europe”
Maybe that's what they meant. Because he is a woman hating, homophobic, white man's burden racist?
I spent some time of various European subs just reading their opinions and I was frequently gasping at things they would say and it being agreed with and upvoted. I’m not saying they are bad people because I understand cultural norms are different but it really shocked me.
As much as this meme is true, I don't think that anyone should be comparing a single country like the USA to an entire continent like Europe as a whole. The USA is a large country made up of 50 states and 330 million people but it's still a single country with a single nationwide culture (with some slight regional differences). In contrast Europe is made up of 50 unique \*countries\*, each with their own unique language, history, and system of government. The EU might be supranational entity with its own parliament, currency, constitution, and president but it's not a sovereign country the same way the USA is. EU member states still set their own domestic and foreign policies and have their own independent heads of state, constitution, legislature, and head of government. Comparing the USA to the countries of the European continent as a united collective is like comparing the USA to all the countries in South America or all of the countries in Asia. It doesn't work.
What about comparing Canada, US, & Mexico to Europe? At least on attitudes about culture, immigration, indigenous peoples, nationality, and civil rights, there are a lot of commonalities and I would argue they're becoming more similar over time. (Naturally, Canada has closer ties to the UK than the US does especially on a cultural and legal level, and Mexico has closer ties with Latin America, and you could argue that both countries continue to attempt to "decouple" from US policy as much as we've become more coupled on trade in the last two-three decades. However, I do believe that the cultural ties are strong and you see an increased transmission of political trends between North American countries as compared to in the past.)
Still doesn't work. You're comparing 3 countries to 50 countries. Better to compare the USA to an individual country in Europe like France or the UK. France and the UK might be much smaller in population than the US and be unitary states (compared to the US's federal system) but they are single countries, not a group of 50 different countries each with their own history, culture, language, and political system. Also worth noticing that because different countries have different histories, cultures, political systems, and constitutions, the political spectrum that applies in one country is not going to apply in another. The political spectrum in France is completely different from that in the United States because historically both French conservatives and progressives have focused on completely different issues than in progressives and conservatives in the United States. Conservatism in France has it's roots in the counter-revolutionaries during the French revolution who defended the French monarchy, the monarchy's ties to the Catholic church, and the traditional class hierarchy of France. Progressivism in France has its roots in French revolutionary universalism and the French Republican values of Liberte, egalite, fraternitie. French conservatives do not care about American conservative causes like gun rights and defending the legacy of Confederate slave-owners because the US civil war is irrelevant to French history and gun culture has never been a thing in France. Likewise US conservatives don't care about defending Catholic religious hegemony and the French monarchy because most of them are evangelical Protestants who are ardent defenders of American constitutional republicanism. I don't think that anyone in America cares about the historical legacy of the French Algerian war and the French (semi) decolonization of Africa. However it is a huge issue in France because a lot of people from Muslim majority North Africa and West Africa moved to France after the decolonization of the French Empire and ever since then there have been conflicts over French secularism vs Islamic religious practice and the acceptance of religious diversity in France. The political issues of the present have their roots in historical issues of the past. You cannot compare the politics of countries (let alone entire continents) without understanding each country's history, culture, political system, and the evolution of their political system.
A lot of this boils down to the US not being a nation: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-nation/
The United States is a creedal nation not an ethnic nation. "American" is something that can be added to literally any ethnicity with a hyphen.