this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Hi there, first I hope I don't offend anyone since this is not meant to be a bash on anyone and it's just reflecting my personal feelings. But I assume I will get attacked anyways.

So I'm a 21 year old from Germany and we don't have many people with darker skin shades here but the few I know who also grew up here are just like any other German and talk/behave the exact same way as every other German and also seem to be perceived like a normal German. Maybe some people might naturally be kinda surprised by people having darker skin since it's more rare but I feel like people just perceive the different skin shade the same way they perceive different hair and eye color.

But from America I noticed that many people constantly call them "black" or "white" people and make a big thing about it as if they were a different race (and of course we scientifically know that there's only one human race). And it seems like many Americans identify with that so much that they separated and developed different cultures, behavior and way of talking solely based on their skin shade even though they're born and raised in the same country.

I know that there was slavery and segregation in America based on exactly this in the past but this is over and we're living in 2025 now which is why I wonder if this is still appropriate and contemporary.

Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times and it makes me feel very uncomfortable every time I hear this "black" and "white" stuff which is becoming constant since American media is everywhere. And I feel like this is also influencing people overseas like here where especially younger people in cities adopt this American mindset and I've even seen some using the N-Word etc.

When I grew up I never even had a concept of "different skin colors" because it just felt normal that people naturally look different and I still think like this about people and see it the same way as people having different hair and eye color but I can tell that these racist ideologies are doing something to me.

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[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 25 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (8 children)

So, good for you, but the particular dynamics of being a colonial country that had a massive portion of its economy based on race-based slavery has resulted in an approach to diversity that has much deeper roots and has been wrestling with hard issues for much longer than Germany has, and Germany's own record with dealing with identifiable minorities in the last hundred years has, shall we say, not always been great.

Many European countries are only now hitting levels of diversity America had fifty years ago, and America has been made of statistically significant communities with distinctive origins for hundreds of years, and this in a colonizing country where there is no historically continuous monoculture. Historically, people tend to become dicks to the "Other" among them when faced with hardship, and much of American history reflects that sort of thing, but also its aftermath and attempts to heal.

Diverse and defiantly distinctive communities formed and persisted because that was how people got by and found support and could make their way, admittedly often because opportunities to assimilate, into whatever soup of dimly remembered pan-European customs that passes for a privileged culture here, were intentionally blocked. Yet even if the reasons for them are shameful, they are real and important, and the American dialogue on race simply cannot be color-blind even when well-meaning. Instead, it has to be a dance, where people of goodwill celebrate both differences and similarities and do not set groups above one another but also do not pretend they don't exist.

I wish more Americans would understand that our approach rarely translates well, and for fuck's sake I wish we had fewer people who were stuck in the bad old days where reconciliation and healing were very much not priorities. That said, I also wish that people from countries with a very different cultural and historical experience would not assume that their countries have shit figured out, when a lot of it simply boils down to "we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here."

[–] Social_Discussion@lemm.ee 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (6 children)

I think it's very important to face the issue and not be blind about it. But it should be faced by acknowledging "we separate people based on their skin shade and we should give efforts to stop doing that".

Because I think it's pretty much self-explanatory that separation on purely ethnicity/looks is not constructive where people are artificially treated as if they were different even though they're not. I think the damage clearly outweighs here.

Justifying racism by saying 'this is what we always did and it worked like that' is not the right way forward imo as we can't be stuck in the past and make the same mistakes that could be successfully improved.

Of course this can't be changed overnight but I think it's important to start somewhere as I think no one wants to live in such unfair system like this. I haven't said other countries aren't affected by this but at least here in Germany it feels like it's not being done to the extent like in America based on any purely ethnicity difference like skin, eye or hair appearance.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

Kid, you are nothing short of adorable.

How long were the Nazis in power in Germany? About ten years, fifteen? 1930's to the Mid-1940's? During how much of that time were Jews discriminated against, subjugated and slaughtered? Even if it started on day one, fifteen years is a fraction of one human lifetime. How would you describe the relationship between ethnic Germans and Jews today, given that little incident 80 years ago? Any grudges or awkwardness there?

Now I want you to imagine it was allowed to go on for a century, followed by another century of "the law says we're merely allowed to treat you as a second-class citizen now, so get to the back of the fucking bus."

Segregation in the United States lasted long enough for separate dialects of English to form. Turns out that wounds that took generations to carve are taking generations to heal. Imagine that for a moment.

[–] TheAvarageNerd@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I think I have to point out, that the Nazis weren't the only ones discriminating against and slaughtering Jews in Europe. There's a long history of that, going back centuries. Ever heard of the cruscades for example? They didn't limit themselves to killing non-Christian only in the holy lands. The Nazis were just the ones who did the killings on an industrial scale. But their reasoning for doing it goes way, way back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews

This doesn't excuse anything the Nazis did, or any form of discrimination, but I just feel it's very dishonest to limit our view of anti-semitism in Germany (and Europe in general) to a fifteen year period, when it's definitely been there a lot longer.

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