(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.
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.
(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, but 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.
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% (and soon properly way less since it seems like they will mass deport illegal immigrants?? That btw seems crazy to me but I don’t wanna get political). 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.