Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies).

Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were burning refugee camps)? The racist, anti-non-Swede, nationalism type is only going to get a lot worse there. The integration of refugees into Swedish society has been a complete failure, which you can see in the crime and employment outcomes. If it were the US, the blame would be squarely placed on racist behavior / dominant culture preventing the refugees from thriving.

Everytime I hear someone from my dear Bulgaria claiming pure aryan race, and I roll my eyes. Of all the countries in Europe we must be one of the most mixed (lol, for good reasons) - as we are one of the connection points between Europe & Asia... but no ... pure Bulgarian race.... WAT?! (Actually our (10%) predecessors came somewhere from Bactria in Afghanistan... so really...)

I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue).

Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds.

As for the refugees, it's not so much racism as just a very difficult situation - a nation can't accept literally millions of young men with no language skills or qualifications and expect things to work out well.

The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.

> I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue).

Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are.

That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues.

> The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.

I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.

> Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies).

You're, unsurprisingly, getting downvoted for this comment, but you are entirely correct. Racism is actually far more overt in Europe than it is in the US - the difference is that it's so widely accepted that people literally do not recognize it as racism even when it's plain as day.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Zwarte Piete, the annual Dutch blackface tradition, which as of 2011 was supported by 93% of Dutch people. 2020, unsurprisingly, marked the first year when "only" 47% people (less than a majority) supported the practice, but even then it's an incredible contradiction between collective self-perception and actual practice.

Ahistorical excuses for it vary ("it's not racist", "Blackface is an American thing; we don't have that in the Netherlands", or my personal favorite "it's not blackface, because it's just soot"). All are incorrect: blackface is always racist, and blackface/minstrelry as a form of entertainment was actually popular in Europe longer than it was in the US, and portraying Black people as "dirty" from soot is a common minstrel trope.

If you want an interesting trip, dig up some Dutch news reports from 2019 when Trudeau and Northam were caught in their blackface scandals. Dutch-language international media actually had a hard time covering it, because the average Dutch person at the time literally could not understand why it was even an issue in the first place. They had to dedicate extra time/space to very elaborate explanations of why blackface is considered offensive, whereas most American media could just report it as-is, leaving any explanation for the final filler paragraphs (if at all).

> Europeans routinely about gypsies).

Sad part is that we as Europeans worked/working really really hard to make it impossible for them to find a place in our communities/societies. And before that we did similar things with Jews. There is one word that explains it all "pogrom". How such short word can contain so much...

While this might be true to some extent, a huge difference between the US and Europe is that in the EU the concept of identity revolves more around nationality than ethnicity/race.

>Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds.

The UK is also closer to having an open conversation around race than many other European countries, and tends to be more directly influenced by US political movements.

As the sibling comment says, it is extraordinary how many Europeans seem to think that racism is a problem that exists only in the USA. Gary Younge wrote an excellent article touching on this topic in the Guardian recently. Key point:

>This ability to unsee what is before our eyes is not confined to the past. The latter-day version of this selective myopia is the repeated insistence that Britain must not “import American race politics” – as if racism is an artisanal product of the US, like French champagne or Italian parmigiano reggiano. When protests erupted on the streets of British cities in 2020 under the banner of Black Lives Matter, many commentators smugly declared that this was an imitation of American fashions – even as the statue of a very English slave trader, Edward Colston, was dumped into Bristol’s harbour.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/...

It's 'nationality' under an implicitly racialized understanding. If you are not white, having a German passport will not be enough for many Germans to consider you fully German.

That's not to deny that American racial categories are either inapplicable or less central to personal identity in most European countries; but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'.

> but let's also not pretend that the roughly equivalent concept is some kind of bloodless bureaucratic idea of 'nationality'.

An apt choice of words, given that almost all European countries practice jus sanguinis - literally "right of the blood". In contrast to how citizenship works in most of North and South America, people who are born in European countries do not automatically get citizenship (nationality) of the country of birth. Instead, citizenship is inherited.

This system became popular in many European countries in part because it provided a way to avoid automatically granting citizenship to immigrants from the now-former colonies, instead creating an extra barrier.

I grew up with blackface (zwarte piet), sung about him/her, even was one on occasion. Never thought anything about it. Until out of nowhere I get called a racist and people show up screaming "Racist!" at a, what was always, just a fun time for kids.

Sure, I, and many people in my country, had a reaction against it, very conservative in nature. But now, over a few years and seeing some reasonable people explain to me that zwarte piet hurts them and that the hair, the lips, the earrings, the slave-like behavior in songs is really quite racist. I, and many others changed their mind. It also helped when I talked to people that held the opinion that I am/was not a despicable person for taking part in this old tradition, there was no "original sin" that I should feel for the rest of my life.

And so a lot of people in my country changed their mind. Sinterklaas is a kids party/holiday and it should be inclusive. Kids couldn't care less about the color of zwarte piet of course. I and everybody I now know is glad we changed course, or rather are still changing course. Mostly smaller villages defiantly keep the old black face, but it will rot away, as it should, over time. It takes time to convince those people, or perhaps they are too stuck in their ways. My grandma lived through WW2 and still always said horribly racist things (i.e. a common saying was that if a river was dirty, "the Turkish people swim in there."). You really couldn't change her anymore. She also lived in constant fear that Islamic people will come to our country and, "since they all live together in small houses, they will come and live with us in our houses if we don't protect our country".

I also cringe at children's books like Pinkeltje (first part published 1939) that I have lying around from my own youth and read to my children until I hit parts that I really couldn't read anymore. Parts are pure racism, i.e. in Africa Pinkeltje is basically battling small black devils, really portayed as sub-human. It takes time for people to see it, to see it as people of other races experience these texts.

I'm 100% on your side now, and I reason with people that aren't and I try not to judge. Easy for me to do of course, when you are at the receiving end I can imagine screaming "Racist!" at a kids party feels, and perhaps is, the only way towards change.

Btw, I also cringe at our still very popular "Jip and Janneke", Jip is the boy, always dirty and mischievous. Janneke the girl: Always clean and vacuuming with her mother and doing the laundry. They also get candy for anything they do well. I tell my daughter she can be a knight, does not have to be the princess. But these things run deep in our culture, and we should get rid of them.

I know it does not really make sense, but I apologize to you and to people that felt hurt. I didn't see it. Thank you for your sustained effort to make me see it as it is and how you experienced it. The world our kids grow up in will be better because of it.

I'm born and raised in Sweden, and have a lot of non white friends and I can firmly say Europeans are about as(or more) race oriented than Americans. We simply banned asking the question. Statistiskmyndigheten explicitly banned taking any stats about ethnicities, while we all know well how middle eastern people are treated (middle eastern telephone salesman need to fake their name for the sake of sales).

Europeans are less race oriented in the same way Russia is a peaceful country and Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an invasion but "special military operation" to majority of Russians living there; we simply don't hear, or want to hear it, and shun people who talk about it.

As a white British male I was never a victim in this so I know the apology is not for me, but I greatly appreciate the message you convey. It felt wrong seeing no replies to your post; this is deserving of a response and so: thank you for your time and your honesty.

Thank you, I appreciate it.