this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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(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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[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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).

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

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[–] protist@mander.xyz 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

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.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] onlym3@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yes there are areas that are more black or white, but this has nothing to do with some sort of force segregation.

Is classism some how less bad than racism?

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

That's a whole nother can of worms. Classism exist everywhere. I don't consider it as bad, but it's still bad. It's just way more subtle than racism usually is. It's there but if you're looking for cartoon villains who look down on people then no.

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Very interesting read, gives a lot of perspective. Thanks!

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[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sorry, how is this a science related question?

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

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?

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] m_f 6 points 1 day ago

We've got !AskUSA@discuss.online for casual conversation about the US. You'll likely get more opinions there than straight science, though

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[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[–] thezeesystem@lemmy.blahaj.zone -4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -1 points 18 hours ago

Anyone got any reports on how tiktok is handling public sentiment on the dead parasite and saint Luigi?

Reddit supression by strong AF and we got fair amount of it on large news and politics subs here.

[–] trajekolus@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] trajekolus@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world -4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No I haven't but I can give it a try even though "weiße Menschen" already sounds quite stereotypical as the titel

[–] 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago

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).

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 0 points 1 day ago

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...)

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] open_mind@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Very interesting, thanks a lot

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

You are welcome! 😁🤗

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