i wonder if there is anyone nervous to talk to me.
(Source: biblefag, via vastly-clueless)
Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world
- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’
- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction
- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour
- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’
- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc
- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from
- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant
- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white
- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’
- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired
This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American.
This is literally about xenophobia not racism… like there are actually poc in Europe… I get what your saying but white people, no matter where they’re from, do not face racism…
Hello, I’m one of these ‘actual POC’ who live in Europe…and the thing is there’s no coherent idea of whiteness there at all.
Race itself is a fluid concept that varies from society to society, and isn’t always about colour. Because Europeans do not all see themselves as uniformly ‘white’, just as in Asia I don’t see myself as the ‘same race’ as a Japanese or Korean even though the US would consider as all the same ‘race’- Asian-American. The Japanese mistreated my family during WW2 because they believed they were superior and destined to rule Asia.
In Europe, ethnicity within what the US usually just sees as ‘white’ matters a lot, and is very much a criteria for racial exclusion. I doubt people in the US care if somebody is German-American or Polish-American but in the UK…boy they do care whether you’re German or Polish. Or how else do we explain Nazi Germany then? I’ve seen a lot of people call the Holocaust a ‘white people’s genocide’ when that makes no sense at all given that the Nazis considered Jewish, Rromani and Slavic people racially inferior and specifically said they belonged to ‘subhuman races’ outside the ‘Germanic/Aryan’ ideal. There’s also the Bosnian genocide- between two European ethnic groups. Not to mention, racism in the US used to be like it is in Europe today. Consider how various European ethnic groups in the US like the Irish weren’t really considered properly white when they were often poor, working-class immigrants who couldn’t speak English. But they are today seen as white- which underscores exactly how race is a fluid concept. That’s why the UN definition of racism itself considers ethnicity and nationality.
To be sure, non-white people face racism in Europe. But the racial hierarchy isn’t about just being ‘white’ by US standards. It’s how much we are in line with the specific majority European ethnic group in the country. Not just white, but whether you are English or German or Italian enough. This is why in the UK there is racism against say, South Asians…but there was also a centuries old conflict with the Irish right up to the 21st century- the Troubles. And imo xenophobia and racism can work hand in hand- such as regarding say, Mexican immigrants to the US. This is what is happening in Western Europe vis a vis Eastern Europeans.
This is just a matter of recognising that how race categories work from place to place differ. Europeans simply see colour and ethnicity + nationality within what the US regards as simply ‘white’. Or some of these ‘white people’ are just not at all considered ‘white’ in Europe (i.e light-skinned Jewish or Rromani people). I get that European ethnic distinctions are less relevant to delineating racial privilege the US, but they continue to matter in Europe. In fact, a lot of racism in the rest of the world is between people, who by US-standards, belong to the same race category.
(Source: desuke-dragon-queen, via artemisinfurs-deactivated201611)
