Um, there’s been a lengthy history here of dividing and conquering the lower orders here on the basis of race. Problems it brought about, as well as deeply entrenched identities (for ill and for good), linger. We cannot and should not try to simply stop seeing race, fiction that it basically is. That’s White People Talk.
Fixated to the extent that the US is? Yes.
Australia is a horrifically racist society; it’s awash in it. But Australian racism tends to be focussed on whoever made up the latest group of refugees; these days it’s Afghans and Sri Lankans, but a generation ago it was the Vietnamese, and a generation before that it was the Greeks. Give it long enough and eventually we’ll be bigoted against Americans.
We’ve also got the age-old anti-indigenous genocidal bullshit (equivalent or worse than US/Canadian/NZ treatment of indigenous people), but the US-style “permanently oppress a racially-defined underclass” is a uniquely American thing. Try that shit in most places and you’ll rapidly get yourself a distinctly uncivil war.
I think you already got your answers i.e. renke + wanderfound
If it becomes critically important to classify, sooner or later we are going to have to adopt something like this.
Unlicensed tacx trucks should be illegal. In fact, they should have the librx thrown at them.
I think from your statement, different regions have their own brands of racism. Racial tensions in the US are unique in their manifestations, but not unique in their occurrence. Certainly the use of slavery, the propaganda used to promote it and keep poor whites in their place, and clinging to the hurts from the Civil War are all factors in how racism manifests itself in the US.
Maybe it isn’t a good thing you’re not talking about it. IIRC in the UK when I was there years ago they had posters reminding people not to use racial slurs at Football games. (not sure where you are, that is just an example). Maybe we are aware of the US’s issues more because we have so many calling it out, vs keeping silent.
Sorta. Try confusing a Japanese person with the “mongrel” race of the Chinese (and vice versa) and see what happens My broad point is - racism is a problem everywhere, even if it seems highlighted in the US.
ETA - historically Europeans have been VERY concerned about race. That other thread about DNA and ancestry showed how concerned they were, not just with race, but with cultural identity. No way a Full blooded Brit would have dirty German genes, etc.
No, it hardly follows from saying that everybody has an ethnicity, to saying that any ethnicities are inherently better or worse than others.
My point was practically the opposite - that offering only a few predetermined checkboxes indicates that governments are not really interested people’s actual ethnicity.
I can assure you that racial slurs are generally used knowingly and deliberate.
So far I don’t see the advantage of breaking up society in distinct racial groups, racial clashes seem to be more often and violent in the US (though it would be fair and square if you use the banlieues around Paris as counterexample, the French-style laicism brings its own bunch of problems).
There isn’t. I am saying everyone does it at one level or another, and it is a bigger issue in the US both because of systemic issues, and because there are groups bringing such issue to light.
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