Racism: USA vs Europe
Is it possible to state whether the US or Europe is more racist or less tolerant to difference races?
I've lived in both worlds...not for very long but long enough to have a say.
Experiences are different for everyone, bottom line is to think about your decisions and accept the consequences. A non-African, non-Muslim, non-Arab, non-Asian, non-third world country citizen has a better chance to take risks in moving from his/her homeland country than someone who gave up his/her life savings to move to the US or Europe to work in the least attractive conditions to send money home. There is always a place to go home to. Not the same for someone from Guatemala or Pakistan for example. I know that things can get tough for blacks in the US but do they have better chances in the states than anywhere else? Despite Bush and his croonies, despite the US politics, some immigrants feel that the US is supposedly a better country than others.
Obviously it offers tremendous opportunities on the professional and academic level, and it embraces you from whatever culture you are to work equally as any citizen. However I think it's too conservative and it only reminds me with the closed mindedness from the East, be it from christians or muslims. At least in France you don't have to go through the congress or texas cowboys to take an early birth pill. Of course freedom and liberty is not reduced to a birth control pill. The US has become very very conservative and religious, but you do not get your head chopped off if you speak against Bush, you do not rot in Jail because you own an opposition newspaper. A friend said to me:France is beautiful and has a great history and culture but "un bicot est un bicot" even if you were a candidate to the presidency :)
Anyway, I lived in the US for 5.5 years (before Sept. 11) and never much felt any discrimination, in spite of my having carried my Arabism and the justice of for the Palestinian cause right on my shirt sleeve. I was gently and diplomatically explaining my cause, what it was to be a Arab/Palestinian, the origins of the conflict and the injustice of what was done to the Palestinians. I found Americans to be very open-minded and quite supportive once they had an understanding of the situation; this because of what seemed to be an innate sense of justice Americans have.
Nevertheless, and paradoxically, there is no denying that racism is still very much alive and well in the US, both with respect to African-Americans for example and, post 9/11, with respect to Arabs and Muslims. I think much of the racism faced by Arabs and Muslims arises from the general ignorance of Americans about the world, which ignorance I find extremely dangerous because it is precisely what allows the leaders of the
US to mislead their people and to downright lie to them in order to get their support for misadventures such as the disastrous war in Iraq, which has now cost the lives of tens of thousands Iraqi civilians in addition to the lives of over 2000 American soldiers forced to wage a war whether they liked it or not! (This is not to bring up the whole other issue of racism in American wars, where it is for the most part poor Hispanics and Afircan-Americans who end up doing the dirty work of fighting and dying for America. I’ll bet you my bottom dollar that the US wouldn’t have gone to war had the Bush and Cheney daughters been compelled to fight in Iraq!). I'd better shut up now so my blood pressure doesn't go through the roof.
Having said that, I’ll add that I believe it's really hard to compare American racism with European racism because, as others have brought up, it depends on where one is in the US and what one's nationality and skin color are, especially in Europe. I think it’s almost impossible to generalize and to decide that the US or Europe is better than the other without looking at specific factors.
posted by Masquerader @ 5:31 PM
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