Some differences Europe/USA

I'm sorry my counter to your origional post was pretty good. I'd also have to say I am sorry the US has never had a dictatiorship style government. Ina discussion of social and racial differances I do belive that is a stark point worth pointing out.

 

I'm sorry but in my personal opinion: it sucked

 

Ralph please. Put aside your obvious and blinding distaste for the US aside for a second please. I'm sorry the Soviet Union is gone, but it's time to move on and look at some facts.

I responded to a claim that the US was lightyears behind Europe in terms of racial relations. I took two, not one but two incidents in living ( means you can find people who were alive at the time and ask them about it ) memory and showed how that was anything but true. There is no refuteing it, even with your redicilous and completely asinine suggestion of " not as bad ".

Your basicly assumeing, swinging at air and not making much of a point besides " my name is red ralph and I don't like the US and I will defy all logic and reasoning to make sure you understand that in an absolutely clear and consicse manner " and congradulations, mission accomplished. Even now your still trying to make claims that are simply not true, due to that fact that in this discussion ( and yes that is what it is, it's not a debait and we are not being scored ) your counters have been gut reactions not backed up by facts or even sanity if I may say so. I mean really, compareing the holocost to the american interments? " not as bad " ?

I do appricate your stance, it's a brave one considering todays modern world. Yet your just off base imho and reacting to comments that offend you because quite simply, again imho, they are not making the US out to be the big imperalist boogeyman you ( and in all fairness many others, some of them my fellow americans ) think it is. On the reverse side of that coin, many Americans have a lot of ignorant thoughts and feelings on Europeans and Europe.

It all goes back to the title of this thread really.

Stupidity... American or European, it's no diffrent.

Have a nice day Comrade

 

However seeing USA movies and TV series is enough to see how race continues being an issue for many people there. I even remember a crappy movie about a black guy from New York who travels in time to King Arthur´s kingdom. He has a bunch of absurd adventures and finally of course falls in love with a woman who is at the service of the Queen or something. Guess what? The woman was BLACK too. It surely was the only black woman in England in early medieval times! It is only a notable example of how far they can go to avoid interracial relationships in movies and TV. Many people must find it repulsive otherwise i cant see the point.

 

Very interesting article, and it is also something that I've always been very curious about. I will try to discuss the two points you quoted in your OP, but remember that my European point of view is actually a French one. I do believe that there are significant cultural differences between each European countries, and I wouldn't presume to speak for Swedes, Greeks or Bulgars.

- The first paragraph in in my opinion spot on. The French are indeed in love with a big, central, authoritarian state. This dates back to the monarchy in general, and Louis XIV in particular. Our society has been fashioned by the idea of a strong centralized power and it's now an integral part of it. The aristocracy of yesterday was replaced by a meritocracy of civil servants.

- The second paragraph... I kinda disagree with that. Americans do put a lot less emphasis on formality, but to say that America was largely successful breaking down racial barriers, and that there is a "social camaraderie" between social classes is stretching it a bit far. There are social classes in the US, and there are racial issues in the US. The attitudes I see here towards Mexicans is pretty much exactly the same that I saw back in France towards Muslims.
Then the author says:

Really? Anybody can be president? Then why have only Christian white males be president so far? Anybody can operate a business, then why are there still so few women CEO of the top 100 companies? The American society indeed has an ideal of being pliable, but it is just that, an ideal, like France has an ideal that its education system is the same for everyone and will make Frenchmen out of anybody who enters it. And I thus think that the author unfairly compares the IDEAL USA with the REAL Europe, in that second paragraph.

 

I'm going to act like I am shocked, just for kicks.

 

Masquerouge,

That's an interesting take on the article.

Cleo

 

The UK doesn't recognise 'hispanic' as separate from white either, as far as I know. Given that our ethnic minorities are so much more minor, I agree that the UK comes off well.

The UK has had a democracy for longer than the US has existed. The EU has never had a dictatorial government.
Just thought I'd point that out.

You mentioned Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany. I really don't think that it's fair to generalise from the Balkans to the rest of Europe, and nor do I think that Germans still gas Jews.
In contrast, race is an issue all across the US.
If I were to point out that the US had a lynching of a black man in the last 5 years, would you accept that it made the whole continent racist?
And yet when you point out that the German Nazis killed a load of Jews over 60 years ago you expect me to believe that all of Europe remains racist, even though the Nazis are gone and my country specifically fought against that?

 

Maybe this was because a large portion of the audience of Martin Lawrence movies are Black women, and Black women won't pay to see a Black guy getting with a white woman.

But as long as you're going to cite fictional anecdotes, here's a real one:
I'm in an interacial marriage and never in the nine years of our relationship have we received a negative comment about it.

 

Maybe not in your face...

Leaving aside why wouldnt black women see a Black guy getting with a white woman, it was only a specially amusing example. Fact is that movies and TV series from USA are full of examples like this, to the point that it seems a rule.

 

One blatant difference is the role and the political beliefs of Politics in general in Europe and with Politics in the US. What i see is that it is like someone pushed all US politics to the right and instead for example an ultra-right political party , a central one , a leftist one , etc. They have an Ultra-right one and a central one.

Another difference are the pastors and Christian evangelicals which the most fair and kind description for them would be "Lunatics and liars who have a good rhetoric skill and many people attend their sermons".

Race ? I do believe that US is less racist than some places in Europe or than Europe in general , regarding the people that live on US soil. Regarding everyone else they are a lot more racist against them than Europeans.

 

That they wont say anything to our face is important progress. If people are afraid of the social rejection of being racist, racism will slowly fade away.

And your movie/TV example is ridiculous. There are hundreds of examples of interacial relationships in American media. It's really not a big deal to most people.

 

This is a very poor line of reasoning. We could say that the Nazis did not use the atomic bomb, only the US used it, and use that as evidence that the Americans are the worst mass killers in the history of Mankind.

You can't pick two cases of racism in Europe, one being WWII (may I remind you that you had no black figthing units during this war because Americans consider the black unable to fight at the time), from the 30 countries in Europe, and generalize that to the whole of Europe and say Europeans are all racists.

This is ridiculous.

 

This is incredibly naive. And you and everybody else who said something similar are fooling yourselves. The problem doesn't simply disappear just cause you ignore it. I've never gotten nasty comments (we had a few bilinguals with us), angry glares, or crap treatment when with a black friend in the US. I did get it in various spots in Europe. (and no, we weren't obnoxious. And yes, I've traveled to these places before without a black friend and was much better received.) The racism in Europe is open, blatant, and unlike anything I've seen .

Because the black Londoner is viewed and treated as just as British as the pasty white local...yeah...right. A few thousand years of history has ensured that nationality is inevitably tied to ethnicity. They may be 3rd generation citizens, but noone's gonna look at them and think 'British', or French or German. In the states, so long as you dress the part, you're generally presumed American until shown otherwise.

Did I imagine the Paris race riots a year or two ago? Centered in 'suburbs' (or whatever) that doubled as impoverished, under-served ethnic enclaves?

You're pretty much confirming my argument for me. Thanks.

Those so called job preferences are usually cultural expectations forced upon them. Maternity leave isn't supposed to impact your career prospects, I thought we moved past that. And assertive women are often viewed much differently and much more negatively than assertive men. Its a double edged sword for them.

That was a deplorable moment in our history and the blackest mark on an otherwise great President. But we didn't have people dying by the millions, thousands, or even hundreds. So please, internment camps, not concentration camps.

What does free speech have to do with PC? Free speech does not mean speech without consequences. It just means that government won't act to suppress your speech. Its a concept that in most respects, America is lightyears ahead of Europe on. (except for anything sexual. We've got some odd, repressed hangups on that)

Second, while the PC movement has some drawbacks, its been a godsend for weeding bigoted and insulting language (and I'm not just talking the racial profanities) from the public discourse. Which has even removed much of it from the private discourse. And as a new generation comes along that's not hearing such crap, it'll slowly but surely be removed from the mentality. The crap I've heard people say as little as 20 years ago I'd almost never encounter today.

That hasn't been the experience of anyone I've talked to. Those formerly communist countries were ideologically egalitarian, sure. But they were butting up against a number of rather chauvinist cultures. And more often than not, culture trumps ideology in practice and sometimes even policy.

Care to explain that?

The kings had significant power long after we had our Republic so...no.

 

Hown many times do we need to say those riots were not related to race or ethnic tensions?

 

Hmmmm...young Arab boys practicing violence in protest for a poor working environment...

Nothing whatsoever to do with ethnicity.

~Chris

 

Young poor boys, some of which are Arabs... do you see the nuance? The cites are not populated by "Arabs" only, you have people coming from Chad, Mali, Senegal, and even France living there too. All of them are angry.

 

Young Arab boys sounds so gay. How in the world did you think that ?

Not all where young.
Certainly not all where Arabs. And it goes without saying that they were not all boys.

How did you think that ?

 

If you want to debate the benefits of affirmative action, whether related to places for racial groups at universities, compensating for other effects on women's careers, or controlling people's speech as political correctness, that's a different subject.
I haven't encountered my country limiting my free speech more than the US government does to its citizens. I hardly regard that as making America ahead of Europe.
Just because people assume that you're American doesn't mean that they're not racist... I haven't encountered racism anywhere near as much as I have in the US.
If you start with the assumption that the way America does things is the best way to do things, and then find that Europe does things differently, and subsequently conclude that Europe is light years behind America, you haven't really said much.
I, personally, am glad that political correctness, social conformity and affirmative action are less popular in Europe. Actual statistics showing that the US does not have much greater social mobility than anywhere in Europe merely confirm that the article Whomp posted is a load of rubbish.

 

Quite so. Poor working environments can affect anyone.