Bluesky had a bad week as a company in relation to its community of users but a thing that is totally alive there rn and really not here is Black journalists and writers and internet people having non-101 conversations about rhetoric and networks at full speed without being hit with hundreds of identical replies about not seeing race or being asked to prove the existence of racism.
I hope fedi people who care about this stuff are paying attention and not just smugly writing them off.
Dingdingding
“Talking about anti-Blackness is oppressively American”
Indeed, where else has any Black people or indeed anti-Black racism? It is a conundrum.
I had a polite UK person carefully explain to me last month that racism is of course common outside the US but *talking about it* is oppressive and unwelcome.
I get that this is making lots of my fellow Global North folks viscerally uncomfortable. There is obviously very real culture clash at work. But I’m online to work toward networks that are safe and joyful for Black and brown and queer and trans people + everyone else dealing with well-founded fear of persecution and abuse.
@kissane The obliviousness of people who genuinely believe that we don't have any racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, or such issues in Europe, and label these as purely "American problems", is truly terrifying.
The same goes for the "yes, but we don't discuss these things here" people, which is a stance purely rooted in privilege. These are global issues, and discussing them and challenging them is vital to creating safer, more inclusive spaces.
@fringemagnet @kissane I think part of it is that there are genuine differences between EU and US racism. It's neither the degree or a "don't have or have" but just... the specific expression of racism.
There are hardly people who talk about race and about slavery being "good actually", but more about general immigrant policy, stereotypes etc. And I think it makes sense, historically: The US' racism was mostly revolving around slavery and segregation at times where that was already abolished or uncommon in Europe. At the same time however, European countries actively engaged in colonialism, enslaved people in *their home countries* (thus less visible in Europe), circulated stereotypes of PoC and native African people, and took their cultural artifacts home to them.
So yes, in Europe we do not see what we have in the US. It's not less racist though, it's just... different, arguably sometimes more subtle. But we still burn our black prisoners in jail :'-(
@fringemagnet @kissane I think you misunderstood my point. But, to be clear, when I said "arguably sometimes" I meant it exactly like that and removing those words distorts meaning by *a lot*. More precisely I say that
a) *some* incidents of racism here are
b) arguably more subtle.
Not all of them.
Example: A lot of the conservative spectrum here tries hard to find "kind words" for terrible deeds, something that I find less the case in the US where they speak more openly. It's not "they're more friendly here" but more "they're more sneaky". Neither is it, that we wouldn't have literal Nazis here, it's just that there's a lot of bourgeoise racism that's common and well accepted in centrist politics.
@fringemagnet @kissane Ugh, I notice what I hate most is being misinterpreted, getting a long rant/mind dump that's completely off the rails of what I wanted to say, and then getting the option removed to clear up what I actually meant.
I understand that "subtle" could've been misunderstood, but I hoped to have made it clear that it doesn't mean "better" or "less dangerous" (actually more the opposite).
@kissane The number of British people who tell me that racism is only a USian thing...
(Other Europeans too. Germans especially for some reason. But I have to live in Britain so that's the most annoying to me.)
@acute_distress I KNOW right... But then, of course, Brexit wasn't about racism it was about economic insecurity!!!
Honestly this place is so similar to the U.S. and it sucks so bad.
@bright_helpings @kissane Basically, the discourse about racism in #Germany is largely stuck at:
"Nazis are racists. I am not a Nazi, therefore I am not racist!"
@kissane This is such a weird thing to argue. Racism is rather different here than in the US but it’s still widely discussed (and in certain quarters forcibly shoved under the rug, but).
(Anyway, that’s entirely beside your point.)
@jonahstein hey Europe may be better with Black people, but dare you mention Roma people, that's where it gets really spicy.
@kissane British people, for one, often like to feel superior to Americans and one of the ways we tend to do that is to tell ourselves that racism in the US is much worse than here (even if acknowledging British racism).
Which, even if it was true in some sense (is it? I don’t know how you’d quantify it) doesn’t excuse anything.
@kissane While there's a lot of overlap between what racism looks like in the US and Europe, there's also a fair chunk of difference due to local history. I've seen a few Americans not get some European issues 'cos of this.
From over here, the stories of racism in the US are just alien enough to be difficult for Europeans to connect to their experience of anti-blackness in Europe.
Working for a US company and getting DEI training has been a great introduction to US racism for me, and...
@kissane The last point kinda ties in with the "American imperialism" angle. Sure, I get that some Europeans don't want quite so much of America in their feeds. If they're feeling squashed by all this Americana, maybe they should have some sympathy for the people who live in the US and are mistreated by that system every day.
And if the ratio of US racism discussion to European racism discussion is bad, maybe us Europeans should be doing more in the second category.
@kissane I think this has become a go to excuse to avoid discussing racism or any kind of discrimination for other Western folks, especially Europeans.
From a more personal perspective, I’d like to have these conversations in a more global sense and rest of the world (which usually includes where I live) is not treated like an afterthought but I also know for that to happen, people who develop these platforms has to start from the issues close to them.
@kissane That’s why I believe these are important not just for the people in the US but also everyone else too. When they start to understand racism in their social context, it’ll be easier for people like me to use that groundwork to explain our issues and find solutions to those problems.
But if one isn’t interested in solving these, they won’t care about any of that.
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