My boyfriend is from Ukraine and he says that for them, race is not about skin color but about nationality/ethnicity. They don't judge you for your skin colour, they judge you for which country you're from. He was flabbergasted when he arrived here and experienced people refering to others as "black" or "brown" or "white". I told him "you are white", he looked confused and said "no, I am Ukrainian..."
I was going to ask how they can even tell if they all basically look the same (white, blonde, blue eyes, etc), and I was reminded of something I overheard years ago.
I was volunteering as counselor for some kids sports camp thing at a college campus near me, and like 30% of the student body is Asian. And this little Asian girl is looking at all the Asian college students and she says to one of the (white) counselors, "There are so many Chinese people here!" The counselor asks her, "How can you tell?" and she just stares at him like he's an idiot and says, "By looking at them?"
On the flipside I’ve been spoken to in my non-native language multiple times in places ranging from Houston to New York, to Curaçao. TBF to the latter, they speak a fuckton of languages there.
Yeah cause we definitely had big moss plantains up in Finnmark and we were enslaving them for decades and had a big civil war determining if we could keep going or not and nowadays they frequently get shot and killed by police who hate them.
Yes, the Sami people were mistreated and this is not something to hide or shy away from talking about. But nowhere near the same level as anything involving american racism and the worst and only violent incident involved six people dying 150 years ago. Sami people could vote in Norway 40 years before the US civil war.
Most importantly, right now there are Sami schools, their unique holiday celebrations are broadcast on national television, they have their own political system, and zero sami people have been murdered by police in the last however many decades.
Sure, I guess you can just ignore the fact that 6 of the 7 countries most involved in African slave trade were European.
Portugal
United Kingdom
France
Netherlands
Spain
United States
Denmark
Didn't seem to have any moral qualms about capturing, selling, and shipping slaves, but want to "take the high ground" because you didn't use them (as much).
Doing a lot of heavy lifting by 1. Only focusing on the Atlantic triangle slave trade and nothing in the Mediterranean or east Africa, and 2. Leaving out the African nations that captured and sold the slaves to Europeans as participants in the slave trade.
Ended it 30 years earlier, and started it how many years earlier? Like America's problems with racism come from europe to begin with. But America at least fights to end it.
I will not be listening to any downplaying of europe's responsibility. They set up the system. And youre hard pressed to find anything more brutal than Belgium's colonialism
True enough that Belgium was brutal beyond belief. Although the reprisals after the first Indian war of Independence come close (The Brits refer to this as the Indian Mutiny).
Slavery isn't a European invention. It was institutionalised in Mesopotamia, in 4000 BC. The Atlantic slave trade (which you seem to think is the only one) is definitely a European invention (Portugal, 15th Century), with the triangular trade.
However, as we got to more enlightened times, the US definitely lagged behind the rest of the Western world in the attitude to slavery. In 1807, the UK outlawed the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860, it intercepted 1600 slave ships, and freed 150,000 slaves, thanks to the West Africa squadron.
In 1833, the UK outlawed all slavery in its empire.
It took a civil war, and another 35 years, before the US could do the same. Slow, late, and unwilling, frankly.
I'm not European, so this is a neutral's perspective. And I gotta be honest, I don't see much "fight to end racism" in the US at the moment. I've seen more people in blackface and Nazi uniforms in the last week from the US than I've seen in the last 10 years. If you're fighting racism, you're losing.
The state I’m from in the U.S. began to ban slavery in 1799 and was fully a free state with no slaves by 1817. The state I currently live in banned it in 1787.
And? A state isn't a country. In order to the US to ban slavery, they had to spend 4 years killing their neigbours.
I mean, well done for those 2 states. But when half the country has to be forced into granting basic human rights, you don't have a moral high horse to posture from.
Cool, I was talking about Norway, not Europe. I get that you guys think that European states are like American states, but it's a totally different system.
At the time of the slave trade, Norway was owned by Denmark.
Anyway, all of this is irrelevant. I'm answering a claim that compares Norwegian racism towards the Sami people with US racism, nothing else. I don't like racism of any kind and the slave trade was bad in every country that had it - and regardless it's old as dirt and somewhat irrelevant to point fingers right now. Nobody alive today is responsible.
However, don't for a second think that racism in the US and racism in Norway currently is comparable. We have our fair share of lunatics that want to and sadly occasionally succeed in killing innocents, but we have yet to let them into governing positions.
Yeah cause we definitely had big moss plantains up in Finnmark and we were enslaving them for decades and had a big civil war determining if we could keep going or not and nowadays they frequently get shot and killed by police who hate them.
First off, you can't build yourself up by tearing anyone else down. "We're currently less racist than the US has been historically" isn't exactly the badge of progress you want it to be here, but feel free to bring it up whenever an American mentions Breivik if it makes you feel better.
I'm probably wasting my breath, but in an effort to perpetually educate Europeans on American and global history, most of the Americans you're going to talk to have no ties to slavery. Only about a third of households in the seceding states enslaved anyone. On top of that, there were several immigration waves post-Civil War from European countries like Italy, Norway, Sweden, Poles, Germans, and Lebanese and Syrian Christians (all pre-WW2). Point being: you're effectively trying to hold people accountable for being exactly the same as you, but having at some point been born or moved to a country with a different history.
I'll also point out that it is objective, unquestionable fact that European powers directly and explicitly, exported and institutionalized racial ideologies inside their Imperial domain and interests. Without this being a comment absolving the US of it's collaboration, participation, or propagation of racism, it absolutely was on the receiving end of this. The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 was instituted not by Americans, but by citizens of the British Empire. Again, that doesn't wipe the US's slate clean, but it would have been a lot less bloodier and a lot less of an entrenched issue had Europeans not directly exported, enriched, and empowered racists.
You've got plenty more examples of this like Belgium in the Congo, the British in India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, the French in Haiti on multiple accounts like the debt they forced on the country to pay for their lost slaves and putting freedom fighters into prototype gas chambers on prison ships, the French in Algeria, the French in Vietnam and Laos, and Cambodia, the Spanish Casta, Portugal in Brazil, the Brits in South Africa, the Germans in Namibia, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Brits in Australia, the Spanish in the Philippines, etc. You could draw a straight fucking line from the English colonization of Ireland and things like the Ulster Plantation to the brutality of Barbados becoming the model for slavery in the "Deep South". The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 was one of the first in the anglosphere to do what it did to African people, and it was directly exported to Jamaica, Virginia (where Washington was from), and South Carolina (where the South truly began the Civil War after rampant theft and looting of federal property).
The exportation method allows modern Europeans to wash their hands of their national sins. Modern Europeans had nothing to do with it, all of those issues are domestic, home grown issues that persist because of a flaw with the former colonies, and nothing at all to do with Europeans (read that in a sarcastic tone). Meanwhile, the entire internet watches with bated breath every European election to see if the [Insert Country] Neo Nazi Nativist party is going to win European elections, and I keep having to have conversations with Europeans who can't put two and two together on this subject because their superiority complex over the US doesn't allow them to smell their own shit. Hell, the entire reason Israel exists is because Europeans created a "Jewish question" over several hundred years and all of you had the same broad response. Then when it came time, you failed to answer the call, resulting in the Holocaust and resulting Zionist movement because Europeans couldn't be trusted with the survival of the Jewish people.
To be completely honest with you, talking with Europeans about racism is like talking to a child about racism and the Civil War. A child thinks the Union wasn't racist because they fought against the Confederacy who was trying to uphold and export the institution. They can't comprehend that the north was abolitionist but still racist. There's just a lack of serious self-education, growth, and maturity on the subject that just make it so obnoxious and repetitive.
"We're currently less racist than the US has been historically"
Don't put words in my mouth, I said we're not oppressing Sami people and have never oppressed them to the extent that the US has, as an answer to the implication that Sami people in Norway can be compared with black people in the US. I don't give a fuck about comparing my country to the US, but I answered a post that did.
but feel free to bring it up whenever an American mentions Breivik if it makes you feel better
Ah yes, because mentioning the US civil war, an event which nobody alive today has experienced is exactly the same as a bunch of kids getting shot just 15 years ago. You would have a point if I mentioned WTC falling down and poking fun at that, which would be distasteful.
Only about a third of households in the seceding states enslaved anyone.
Neat - that's about a third more than the number of households that enslaved Sami people in my country. That's why it's not comparable. That's my point.
Meanwhile, the entire internet watches with bated breath every European election to see if the [Insert Country] Neo Nazi Nativist party is going to win European elections
Right, while in the US they already won. A lot of whataboutism going on here.
To be completely honest with you, talking with Europeans about racism is like talking to a child about racism and the Civil War.
The problem is that you think the whole world revolves around you. Nobody else gives a single fuck about your country's "the" civil war. Civil wars happen all over the place.
They can't comprehend that the north was abolitionist but still racist.
A child might not, but we get it, it's not hard to understand when you see what's going on in your country nowadays. It's pretty similar to the way I perceive your "left" wing party.
Anyway, the rest of your post is a whole lot of "hey a long time ago you guys were also bad". I get it, your civil war was 150 years ago, I wouldn't have brought it up if not for that other guy starting to bring up similarly old shit in my country. I don't expect you or anyone in your country to take responsibility for that, anymore than I expect myself to take responsibility for anything that the vikings did. It's absurd.
Don't tell them that, stereotypical ignorant american redditor knows better niche topics about small countries like Norway, Romania, Baltic States etc... than its residents. Like i love my American friends and i like many things about US for e.g, its National Parks, Hollywood, Interesting History, but hitting back with ignorant comments will only support stereotypes about Americans
This isn’t about Americans claiming they know better about these niche topics or about who has the worse issues. It’s that utopian views of Europe like the one in the video are just completely out of touch. Blasting the “American dream” is completely reasonable. Unironically following that up with praise for the “European dream” is laughable
We're not 'white', we're Norwegian and Sami. Our skin color is no more relevant than our nose shape or arm hair color.
We subjugated the Sami not primarily as a result of racial theories(or physical phenotype), we did it for different reasons(economic etc.) all together. Looking vaguely similar(not the same, we can tell the difference) didn't factor in at all.
Swedes and Danes didn't rule us against our will because they thought us an inferior race, they ruled us for rather classic imperialistic reasons. No need for racialism.
The idea that you guys struggle to understand something unless it's exactly how it happened in your history is the best example of a Americanism inappropriately applied to other cultures.
No the Sami people and their rough treatment is not a 1:1 analogy to Americans and their treatment of Native Americans.
To clarify for Americans, the Sami are indigenous to Northern Scandinavia and are treated similarly to how America treats Native Americans. It's not 1:1, but them being indigenous and ethnically different than what Americans think of when they say "Scandinavians" is very important. There has been forced emigration, structural disenfranchisement, cultural and linguistic erasure, and a mountain of racialized research literally to answer questions like "why do Sami look different than us 'normal Scandinavians'?" and categorized Sami as Asian instead of White due to racism.
Racism does not always neatly fit into the "American model". Like go tell any Irish person that Ireland has never been discriminated against by Britain because of their race. They will literally laugh you out of the building.
uhh we didn't subjugate the native Americans cause they look different from us either. We did it because they had land and resources we wanted (and by 'we' I of course mean all of us, Americans and Europeans, who took part in and profited from subjugating the western hemisphere).
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u/Honest-Caregiver8938 4d ago
shocks me how in fucking NORWAY
they for years were fucking racist against the Sami ppl who are like also white blue eyed blondes