(Disclaimer: So first I wanted to emphasize and acknowledge that this can be a sensitive and emotional topic. This question is solely because I’m curious and am trying to understand it from an educational/sociological perspective. I know that a lot of people online can have a short temper but this is not a bait, I just genuinely wanna understand. I hope I will find a few more intellectual people here who won’t get offended and can give a more empirical answer. And please apologize if my English is not perfect, English is not my native language and I’m just 21.)
So as a German I’m very close and familiar with the horrible actions that humanity committed in the past. I’d say compared to America who enslaved people based on their skin color Germany was way worse by mass executing and enslaving people based on their ethnicity/religion.
But there is one big difference that I don’t understand: Here in Germany we are extensively educated about what happened in the 3rd Reich. It’s a big part about our education to learn and understand what horrible things happened and why they happened to make sure this never happens again. This kinda lead to the point where many Germans are deeply ashamed just for being a German (even though they’re quite far detached from what happened) and this is also a reason why you won’t find many German flags hanging here.
So I’m not much aware about Americas education on their slavery but I experienced extensive racism and misunderstanding from Americans about race to the point where many (of course not all but many) Americans make a big deal out of race as if it defines their core personality and seem to overly obsess to the point where it seems people get different opportunities and are still to this day getting treated unfairly based on their skin. Even though every educated person knows that skin color is not changing someone’s personality since we’re biologically all the same race called homo sapiens sapiens and what people call “race” is not scientifically accurate but rather a social construct. This seems to go further where people still use racial slurs that have been used for slaves (like the so called n-word) and people overly focusing on skin color like saying they don’t wanna be friends with white/black people or don’t wanna date them. And it almost seems like it’s getting worse in a way and was somewhat better maybe around the 80’s.
As a German this feels very weird and wrong to many of us (I talked to many Germans about this who feel similar including Germans who lived in America for a while). Because the equivalence would be if we still continued to make a big thing out of whether someone is a Jude or not which we don’t. Whether someone is a Jew or how black or white someone is, really isn’t a thing at all here. Of course I’m totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany (but also in the US and every part of the world) but the general way of thinking about “race” in everyday life seems to be very different.
Because to me this stereotype that people solely have low cognitive abilities based on their skin color is very outdated. We all have different skin, there are no lines, humans are colorful and not “black or white”. I wonder if there have been strong efforts of American politics and society to get rid of these stereotypes and gain equality for everyone. Because I wonder what the reasons are why this seems like not being the case (at least to the extent it should be) and it seems unnecessarily divisive. Since to me educating about these stereotypes and not putting people into boxes is the key for getting rid of it when there is a mass willingness of people wanting to see each as people and not just as a color and finally put this behind. Might there maybe be industrial or political interests in keeping this divisiveness?
Like I said I’m very open minded and am trying to understand. Please have understandment for my perspective and try to be thoughtful in your answer.
In the end of the day I would just wish for whole humanity that we could put those toxic and destructive actions to the past and start embrace loving everyone for who they are as an individual.
I’m sorry but what is making you think social stereotypes in the US are not prevalent for the same reasons social stereotypes are prevalent in Germany?
Like I mentioned in my post I’m not at all trying to downplay any of the racism that also still exists in Germany. To me and other Germans I know who even lived in America it just seems that Americans overly focus on ethnicity and these stereotypes linked to that on a daily basis that’s dividing these people to a bigger extent than in Germany.
Maybe I’m wrong here and my personal experience might be different from yours but I would love to understand more generally about this topic in a scientific way. That’s why I asked this here.
So correct me if I’m wrong but please be thoughtful and fair in your answers.
A person from country ran by a nazi nepo baby regime supporting Israeli genocide is wondering why a country ran by slaver nepo baby regime supporting Israeli genocide is “racist”
🤡🤡🤡
So much lesson here jaja
OP is young and curious, no need to mock them.
Private prisons are profitable.
All these Americans are so fucking offended lmfao
Hey Americans:
Was Germany built on slavery and genocide like America was?
Does Germany still have slavery like America does?
Was Germany built on slavery and genocide like America was?
You are too poorly educated to understand how comical this statement is.
Most of German richest families who own the country made their seed capital in part or ALL during Nazis regime including SLAVE labour…
JFC learn the history of your own country.
Yes.
Yes.
Basically: money 🤑💰. The desire for more of that led to all sorts of bullshit made-up “science” supporting the doing of what the people wanted to do anyway.
Here’s a fantastic introduction video from what I consider a great series: https://youtu.be/Ajn9g5Gsv98. In particular it contrasts slavery in North vs. South America, where the latter was so much more violent and bloody and dismembered so many more people that they had to constantly import more bc so exceedingly many died that they could not keep a self sustaining population of them, which somehow still made the northern version all the more evil even while being more “gentle” bc they could therefore breed slaves like cattle.
The dehumanization might have been part of the point, or it may have only been helpful to make the money, but either way, the families of slave owners who did not go out into the fields and therefore were not as closely associated with it - though crucially, still directly benefitted from the work product - went along with it all as collaborators due to the fact that their financial status depended upon them doing exactly that.
Very interesting, thanks a lot
You are welcome! 😁🤗
People one might call “black” make up roughly 12% of the population of the USA but just 0.5% of the population of Germany. Furthermore (and this shouldn’t be surprising after centuries of repression) the black population of the USA is, statistically speaking, doing a lot worse than the rest of the country. I’m not familiar with the black population of Germany but I expect that they are generally recent immigrants without a history of generational poverty and therefore that they’re not doing too badly.
(Population numbers are from Wikipedia.)
Thus, from a German point of view, black people are rare individuals. From an American point of view, black people are a large, distinct subpopulation and it’s easy for a person looking for a reason to reinforce his racist beliefs about them to find it.
Also (and this is is conjecture) I suspect that Germans outside the far right may be unusually reluctant to stereotype minorities, for obvious reasons. In that sense, Germany rather than the USA may be the outlier. The problems in the USA are going to be particularly visible because the USA is such a huge presence in global culture and because the different groups in the USA are easy to distinguish while the ones in many other countries look and act the same as far as an outsider can tell.
I wonder if there have been strong efforts of American politics and society to get rid of these stereotypes and gain equality for everyone.
Of course, and stereotypes are not tolerated in many contexts. For example, I’m a white-collar worker and I’m pretty sure that I would have serious problems at every job I ever had if I said or did something racist at work (or even outside of work if it became sufficiently public).
Of course, and stereotypes are not tolerated in many contexts. For example, I’m a white-collar worker and I’m pretty sure that I would have serious problems at every job I ever had if I said or did something racist at work (or even outside of work if it became sufficiently public).
This depends heavily on where in the US you live/work. In the more conservative rural areas racism is tolerated so long as you’re not screaming it from the rooftops or wearing it on your sleeve. I have the appearance of someone who most would assume is very conservative so people feel far too comfortable being total racist shitbags around me.
That is a good point (although it seems like dark skinned population in Germany is closer to 1 percent so it’s probably 1/100 in Germany and 12/100 in America). But I think it’s noteworthy that Germany also has large numbers of migrant population and a big percentage of people are from the middle east who also have different features but even a quite different religion being the Islam (seems like Muslims make up about 7% of the population) and people here don’t really make a big thing out of whether they’re ethnicity is Arab or German or if their religion is Islam or Christianity. Although there’s a growing population being against them I think the general consensus is that Germany is very open for migration and we take many refugees. About 17% of the German population so almost 2 in 10 people are first-generation immigrants and in America it’s only 13%. About 55% of the Muslims also have German citizenship and many of them lived here for multiple generations.
But I appreciate that stereotypes are not tolerated in some American jobs, that’s a good start.
A big part of it is that Europe in general is a lot more homogeneous than North America. Replace black with Muslim and you’ll probably see a lot of “American” racism/xenophobia around you.
The biggest pockets of prejudice in the US seem to be the most homogenous. Homogeneous white Christian culture does seem to lead to racism, antisemitism, and a general dislike of progressives. It’s easy to convince yourself what “others” must be like when you’ve never met one and have always been taught bad things about them.
My dad is Jewish and lived briefly in Arizona in the '70s. People actually asked - with a straight fucking face! - to see his horns. Because that’s the stereotype they grew up hearing and never thought to question it.
I’m white. I mostly grew up in central Jersey in the '80s & '90s in a pretty diverse area, with a mix of blue and white collar. My school district was about 45% white (about 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 Jewish), 45% Black, and the rest were mostly Hispanic and Asian (largely Filipino and Vietnamese). I never heard a white person say the N word. My best friend in grade school was Black, and that wasn’t unusual in any way. We all liked R&B and that was the majority of what was played at school dances. Black History Month was taken very seriously and concepts in race and racial sensitivity were taught all the time (not just February). They did not flinch away from teaching about how horrific slavery was. Over the course of about a week, we watched Roots in the auditorium in Junior High (and little me, who loved TNG, was so excited to see Levar Burton, and absolutely wrecked after watching it). We discussed Rodney King & the LA riots, we talked about the OJ Simpson trial. Anyway my point was that we were steeped in racial awareness, both historic and present-day, and there was very little conflict along racial lines.
The summer before junior year, we moved to a white-ass upper-middle class suburb of Philly, where my new high school had about 3,000 kids (roughly 1,000 each in grades 10, 11, & 12), and there were about 5 Black kids total. I don’t remember there being any non-white kids in any of my classes. None of our classes taught anything about race, and Black History Month wasn’t even mentioned. And in my first week of school there, waiting at the bus stop, all the white boys were trying to look cool by using the N word constantly, just absolutely casually. I was horrified, because to me this was such an awful thing to say, I couldn’t understand why they were so comfortable saying it. Everything they said about Black people was based on an offensively cartoonish stereotype. And then I realized those guys had probably never even met a Black person, so Black folks were an abstract idea to them rather than actual people.
Anyway this has turned into a novel, but I thought it was an interesting microcosm. We need a strong program of racial awareness and history taught to kids throughout their education. What worries me is places like Florida trying to remove slavery from history curricula for K-12. That will cause ignorance, which eventually leads to hatred or contempt.
Of course, there are so many more aspects of race relations and generational disparity, but I don’t have the mental energy to address them right now.
It’s easy to convince yourself what “others” must be like when you’ve never met one and have always been taught bad things about them.
Some of the most vocally racist people I ever met (in rural Oklahoma, which I’m sure surprises no one) had a black neighbor that they were very good friends with. It defies understanding.
Yea unfortunately there is way too much across the world. I hope it will become better. I and my family at least don’t care about someone’s religion or what country they migrated from and I don’t personally know one who does so that’s a good thing.
I’m totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany
This is what you need to focus on
Of course it’s important to focus on that but I think they are very few (I don’t know one personally). In every day life we don’t make a thing about where someone is from and we take many refugees.
I think you need to inform yourself of your own country. The AfD is on 19% and already the 2nd largest party. They are a racist party and full of Putinites too. You have such a massive problem with racism in Germany, that it is astounding to see you here asking your protectors - the Americans - why they have racism.
Addressing the education portion of your question, I grew up in the American South in the 1980s-90s, and I learned plenty about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow in school. I recognize this is a single data point, but am pretty sure these are widely taught. I also don’t really hear anyone calling for a return to slavery or Jim Crow, so this education seems to have successfully imbued our culture with a sense that these are bad things.
I think your overall question is answered somewhat by the fundamental demographics of each country, though. What percentage of Germans today are ethnically German? A lot. In the US, our racial mix is much more fragmented, to the point where racial minorities have thriving subcultures that some people don’t view as extolling “traditional American values,” whatever those are. But these subcultures are increasingly visible and powerful, leading to resentment among many who view their culture, that of “traditional American values,” as losing power.
The single largest ethnic group in the US are people of German descent (I’m one of them), with well over 40 million people, and these people along with people of British descent are largely the ones driving this “traditional American values” bullshit, btw. People of Irish descent used to be subject to serious racism in the US in the early 20th century, but have since been fully accepted into the dominant white culture and many now also participate in white racism against Black and Hispanic people.
Germany is currently backing Israel’s holocaust of the Palestinians to the hilt, so I wouldn’t go boasting about lessons learned…
Totally unhelpful. You’re talking to an individual who is trying to understand human behavior, not someone who’s personally responsible for their country’s actions.
What better example than from a culture with which they’re intimately familiar? Attitudes like this can be hard to change, even after generations of intense education campaigns. As a German should recognize this from their own experience
The German way they have “dealt with” their fascist legacy isn’t perfect either. They should also unlearn some of that. The tone of the original question is “we beat racism, why can’t you”, making “no you haven’t” absolutely relevant to understanding the problem
The German way they have “dealt with” their fascist legacy isn’t perfect either.
It is far from perfect. The biggest problem is, that at some point the civilians had lost interest in continuing the denazification(idk if that’s the right word/translation). This led to pardoning war criminals and stopping the prosecution of criminals. Later I can make a more detailed explanation about this since I wrote an assignment (partially) about this, but have to search for it and translate it first.
Here in Germany we are extensively educated about what happened in the 3rd Reich.
Yes🤡
Nice of you to provide such a prime example of lack of education. Equating current events in Palestine and Israel with the actual Holocaust is absurd. I’m pretty certain Israel has not industrialized genocide at the level Nazi Germany did, and I’d be very surprised if Israel was exclusively killing Jews. Because those are two fundamental elements of the term Holocaust.
Stop diffusing the meaning of words with very specific meaning like Holocaust.
Also, great job of providing nothing to the actual topic at hand and derailing it with whataboutisms.
The word holocaust has a meaning before The Holocaust. Calling other things a holocaust is not diffusing anything, it’s just using the meaning of the word. Whether the Palestinian genocide can be called a holocaust is arguable, but you’re allowed to call other things holocausts.
When anyone talks about Holocaust these days, it’s reasonable to assume they talk about the one vs the Jews by Nazi Germany. It has gained a special meaning unlike the more generic word genocide, which is perfectly fine for other use cases. The Holocaust was a genocide, not every genocide is a Holocaust.
If you want to go semantic/etymological, calling the current Palestine genocide a Holocaust still makes no sense, as the old Greek holocaust literally means “full incineration”, burning sth so nothing is left. Which makes sense in association with Nazi crematoriums, and its historic use for large fire catastrophes such as whole cities burning down.
It also made - semantically - sense for Neonazis in Germany who called the fire-bombings of German cities by the Allied in WW2 holocausts as well. This also tries to form a link and somehow equate two entirely different things. Both atrocities by modern standards, sure, but at vastly different levels.
(Mis-)appropriating terms to undermine and diffuse their meaning is a simple and effective populist tactic, which is why it’s popular with extremists.
Call a genocide a genocide, call the Holocaust the Holocaust.
The world is full of nuance, not just radicals and extremes.
Whether the Palestinian genocide can be called a holocaust is arguable
So far since all of that evidence is sitting under the rubble that nobody will ever has access to.
Remember that we only know what Germany did in detial because Germans got beat into submission by several other countries and they could not cover it up properly.
I meant more in the semantical sense. There’s no denying the level of destruction and killing.
Stop diffusing the meaning of words with very specific meaning like Holocaust.
Said a person down playing Israeli behavior in Gaza…
Pathetic
very surprised if Israel was exclusively killing Jews.
Yes Germans only killed the Jews 🤡
Where did I downplay Israeli behavior in Gaza?
Asking for using correct terms for things is hardly defending Israel or downplaying their actions, I think.
I also nowhere claim that Germans only killed Jews. Don’t put words into other’s mouths, and maybe try being less hostile and always expecting the worst from people?
Sorry, how is this a science related question?
Which would be a better community to post this in?
We’ve got !AskUSA@discuss.online for casual conversation about the US. You’ll likely get more opinions there than straight science, though
I think it’s fine here. If something like !asksociology@mander.xyz existed, that would be more appropriate, but I think askscience is fine, given the relatively small size of Lemmy.
that was kinda my thinking, maybe this is a good place for social science questions still
Ah, I get that - wanting an empirical answer rather than speculation is totally understandable, especially when the question is about something people have a tendency to speculate about already.
I didn’t mean by my question to say you shouldn’t post here by the way; maybe next time specifying that you wanted answers with an empirical basis might have helped contextualize the post - I was worried you might have meant to post in a different community, for example.
Germany is a top supporter of the genocide in Gaza. What do you mean “we are taught about the Third Reich and never again”?
Wow, wild, uneducated thread.
Racism isn’t based on race, it’s based on power. That’s why America is still a race-based society in late 2024
America is a class based society like every other clown regime.
Racism is a specific flavour of American classism.
You said it yourself it is above power…
The difference is that, in World War 2, Germany was reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of its population was killed off because of the direction that its society took. This forced it to take a really long and hard look at itself and figure out what it could do to make sure that this never happened again.
By contrast, the U.S. has never been put in an equivalent position. The bloodiest war in our history was actually the U.S. Civil War in the 1860’s over slavery (and some other things, but mostly slavery). Although the anti-slavery North in that war won and was able to successfully end slavery in the entire country, racism itself was a whole separate issue, and (simplifying the history a bit) it continued to exist formally as a less extreme government-backed institution until the mid-20th century. (An example of this were the “separate but equal” schools that segregated black children from white children and were very much not equal.)
Of course, this only changed the law of the land, not hearts and minds. Education is very local, so there is no central authority which makes decisions about these things, and people regardless have the option of sending their children to private (often religious) schools, or even to home-school them. Furthermore, unlike many countries, we take freedom of belief extremely seriously, and additionally we extend this to a near-absolute freedom for parents to teach whatever things they want to their children to believe. The U.S. stance is essentially that we might not like the values that our neighbor is teaching our children, but we like the idea of the government telling us what values we are required to teach to our children even less, and this is essentially because our country was founded on a fundamental distrust of government and this general attitude has propagated down the generations.
So, what would it take for the entire country–and remember that this is a huge and incredibly diverse country–to get together and decide that we really need to, collectively, put aside our own individual opinions of what our values should be and what we should be teaching our children and refashion our entire society around a new collectively held set of values? That is asking a lot of people, so probably the most likely way that would get done is if fascism takes over our country and drives us to start a war that results in the entire country being reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of our population being killed off. This would force us to really take a long and hard look at ourselves and figure out what we could do to make sure that this never happened again.
(Except that now that nuclear weapons exist, “rubble” takes on a new meaning, so that rebuilding part may not get a chance to happen…)
OP: tell us your opinions about the Roma (aka - Gypsies).
Like I said this is not what this was meant to be for. I was looking for some educated explanations of the matter from an objective/scientific perspective to also widen my horizon on the matter. I don’t want a bate or finger pointing here.
That’s the point though. What’s an educated explanation for why it exists in Germany as well? Or France. Or Britain.
It’s because many people are insular and afraid and need someone to blame everything on.
I’m not trying to blame anyone here. Just want to understand including understanding my own country of course.
