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.
@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?
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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 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.
Very interesting read, gives a lot of perspective. Thanks!
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.
German Perspective
I wouldn't cast stones in glass houses.
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.
Sorry, how is this a science related question?
I thought this can be seen as social science and I was looking for a more scientific tone instead of subjective "opinions". Which would be a better community to post this in?
I think it's fine here. If something like !asksociology@mander.xyz existed, that would be more appropriate, but I think askscience is fine, given the relatively small size of Lemmy.
We've got !AskUSA@discuss.online for casual conversation about the US. You'll likely get more opinions there than straight science, though
Ah, I get that - wanting an empirical answer rather than speculation is totally understandable, especially when the question is about something people have a tendency to speculate about already.
I didn't mean by my question to say you shouldn't post here by the way; maybe next time specifying that you wanted answers with an empirical basis might have helped contextualize the post - I was worried you might have meant to post in a different community, for example.
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
Are you from a major metropolitan area or rural? I ask because a lot of this tends to fester in rural areas and the us has a lot of them. Its not all of it as you also get people pretty quickly blaming when their lives are not great. White people black people, black blaming white people, and citizens blaiming immegrants. Add in that the us wealth disparity is way high. Like it was in the gilded age. We are sitting at a 40 on the index while germany is a 30. Even worse we had a supreme court ruling called citizens united which effectively said money is speech and allows for unlimited money in our politics. Between rich folk wanting to push division among the poor and some foreign influences that really don't care as long as there is division and chaos as maximally as possible. Add in social media and its ability to link up people who locally would be pretty much alone in their views into a nice little confimation communities. Whelp at that point we have what we have today. Its gotten to the point actually were I can't tell how much are assholes are influencing abroad and how much abroad assholes are influencing ours. Alls I do know is the real issue is money and how unbalanced ownership of it is now. the highest is in billions so nine zeroes. So if you don't have at least 5 zeroes you should certainly should know where you stand and because of how massive the increase each zero is. 6 or 7 are still way down closer to the only zero end than the top.
I'm from a rural area and mainly lived in different small towns and villages but also lived in a big city here in Germany. It almost feels to me that divisiveness is less in rural areas here since diversity is generally lower and the few people who "look different" or migrated need to fit in more and kind of just grow into the community and are seen like everyone else (but this might just be my area) (I think communities in Germany are more centralized than decentralized like in America). Even though I've seen more open mindedness in cities, I've also seen more separation and inequality there.
I think like you mentioned wealth disparity is probably a big factor and I get that this is more extreme in America (especially if you have this turbo capitalism) and they need someone to stick it to.
Germany is a top supporter of the genocide in Gaza. What do you mean "we are taught about the Third Reich and never again"?
Remember that Amerikkka is not a democracy, or socialist country. We are more of a oligarchy and we are ruled by the corporate elite. The system has propaganda everywhere saying we have power. But when the billionaires don't like something they can just throw money at the government (or however they do it) and it will change, Amerikkka is a capatilism country where we brainwash the people that think to believe that not having basic necessities is good for us and instead of helping each other we should fight each other over the little amount the corporate overlords give us.
There will be people who will respond saying "na huh! Not true". Propaganda in this country is EXTREME and sense all media is owned and operated by the billionaires... It's easy to brainwash the country (hence why TikTok is getting banned. Not owned by Amerikkka elites, and word of things they don't want us to know comes out from it, can't control it so ban it)
Private prisons are profitable.
Have you read "Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten" by Alice Hasters?
Please. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" cannot be applied to racism as a whole, neither did it happen in the way that would justify a national mythos (vgl "Gegenwartsbewältigung" by Max Czollek). Please don't point fingers as a European. And German.
No I haven't but I can give it a try even though "weiße Menschen" already sounds quite stereotypical as the titel
I don't really know what to write here without becoming uncivil. You're using big words like science, humanity, everyone, whole continents, 'extensive education' - there's power in reflexion when thinking about discrimination (im Deutschen Diskriminierung und_bis Benachteiligung).
I’m totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany
This is what you need to focus on
Of course it's important to focus on that but I think they are very few (I don't know one personally). In every day life we don't make a thing about where someone is from and we take many refugees.
I think you need to inform yourself of your own country. The AfD is on 19% and already the 2nd largest party. They are a racist party and full of Putinites too. You have such a massive problem with racism in Germany, that it is astounding to see you here asking your protectors - the Americans - why they have racism.
Basically: money 🤑💰. The desire for more of that led to all sorts of bullshit made-up "science" supporting the doing of what the people wanted to do anyway.
Here's a fantastic introduction video from what I consider a great series: https://youtu.be/Ajn9g5Gsv98. In particular it contrasts slavery in North vs. South America, where the latter was so much more violent and bloody and dismembered so many more people that they had to constantly import more bc so exceedingly many died that they could not keep a self sustaining population of them, which somehow still made the northern version all the more evil even while being more "gentle" bc they could therefore breed slaves like cattle.
The dehumanization might have been part of the point, or it may have only been helpful to make the money, but either way, the families of slave owners who did not go out into the fields and therefore were not as closely associated with it - though crucially, still directly benefitted from the work product - went along with it all as collaborators due to the fact that their financial status depended upon them doing exactly that.
Very interesting, thanks a lot
You are welcome! 😁🤗
Locking because the discussion isn’t consistent with community rules.
The difference is that, in World War 2, Germany was reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of its population was killed off because of the direction that its society took. This forced it to take a really long and hard look at itself and figure out what it could do to make sure that this never happened again.
By contrast, the U.S. has never been put in an equivalent position. The bloodiest war in our history was actually the U.S. Civil War in the 1860's over slavery (and some other things, but mostly slavery). Although the anti-slavery North in that war won and was able to successfully end slavery in the entire country, racism itself was a whole separate issue, and (simplifying the history a bit) it continued to exist formally as a less extreme government-backed institution until the mid-20th century. (An example of this were the "separate but equal" schools that segregated black children from white children and were very much not equal.)
Of course, this only changed the law of the land, not hearts and minds. Education is very local, so there is no central authority which makes decisions about these things, and people regardless have the option of sending their children to private (often religious) schools, or even to home-school them. Furthermore, unlike many countries, we take freedom of belief extremely seriously, and additionally we extend this to a near-absolute freedom for parents to teach whatever things they want to their children to believe. The U.S. stance is essentially that we might not like the values that our neighbor is teaching our children, but we like the idea of the government telling us what values we are required to teach to our children even less, and this is essentially because our country was founded on a fundamental distrust of government and this general attitude has propagated down the generations.
So, what would it take for the entire country--and remember that this is a huge and incredibly diverse country--to get together and decide that we really need to, collectively, put aside our own individual opinions of what our values should be and what we should be teaching our children and refashion our entire society around a new collectively held set of values? That is asking a lot of people, so probably the most likely way that would get done is if fascism takes over our country and drives us to start a war that results in the entire country being reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of our population being killed off. This would force us to really take a long and hard look at ourselves and figure out what we could do to make sure that this never happened again.
(Except that now that nuclear weapons exist, "rubble" takes on a new meaning, so that rebuilding part may not get a chance to happen...)
