Both you and @anon61221983 are correct, from my POV.
Especially in Germany, but also in many other places in Europe, open racism isn’t an option for most racists. Most of them would belive they are not racists, but. You know. It’s a cultural thing. It’s a religious thing. And of course, those people are just not like us. They don’t share our Leitkultur. They lived like this (whatever this is) for generations, so of course there’s also some hereditary element, but we are not racists. You know, those families of our people living on social benefits for generations, they are also a nuisance!
(FTR, you want to look up Thilo Sarrazin to get an impression how fucked up the discourse in Germany is. Especially in regard to third generation immigrants from Turkey, the veiled racism was so very clear, and the arsehole still got invited in primetime talk shows.)
Othering based on the tone of your skin and the colour of your hair is so easy. I wondered why people even discuss the question if “whiteness” is an appropriate term. The fucking racism doesn’t taste any better. But then, I can see the intellectual challenge - it keeps the mind off doing other stuff, and, granted, might even lead to a better understanding. The question from my POV would be: is it worth it, or is my understanding of racism developed enough to see through this shit?
And I acknowledge that I sometimes don’t see through all the shit.
