International Blog Against Racism Week: Central European perspective

[winter]

ibarw is on again, and after the recent kerfuffle (or does anyone remember it in the wake of the Boldthrough?), I've been thinking along the same lines.

One issue I often see in racism discussions is the Europe/America divide. Racism in America is something special, yes, but I think it's mostly because of how much it's been fought against and for, there. I wonder if it wasn't for the better: if Americans aren't perfect, at least they have the instinct to respond to an accusation of racism with "No, I'm not." Too often in Poland, the response is "So what?"

And I'm not talking about the usual angle, the black/white divide, though that one makes the news on the football field. Not even about Asians, though there was a recent stellar example of a big bazaar being shut down, then given an extension - "But only for the white merchants, because the Asians are all illegal immigrants". And no, the guy didn't lose his - ministerial - post over it.

The thing is, in Europe it's hard to say "white", and our racism problems aren't the ones that make big fandom debates. When did you last read a post railing against discimination of the Roma? Or Romanians even - in Poland, those two are often lumped together and passed off as thieves and beggars. Or the Ukrainian affair, which goes back centuries before there were either blacks or whites in what is now the US of A. And that's not even touching on the big bogeyman.

To apply standard American measures of political correctness to Poland would be to have a heart attack over every fridge magnet of a Jew counting money. It's a financial good-luck thing, on the lines of the Irish leprechauns with their beer and pots of gold (and somehow, the Irish sell them themselves), but put it next to the tele-evangelist who promises not sulphur, but the Jews coming to take everything away if people don't pray hard and give him money, and it starts being frightening. This is the country where accusations of Jewish blood are thrown in political debate as the highest insult.

This is the country that used to have three million Jewish citizens, once. Once.

So forgive me if I don't overlook these issues, if I don't close off my creativity in a garden where I pretend race doesn't matter at all, just because "it's an American issue". I'm too hot-blooded for that, too prone to overthinking to ignore the fact that if something conforms to the usual tropes because it's easier, it reinforces them in the reader, the watcher.

Mixing Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish blood probably wasn't one of my ancestors' brightest ideas.


(As an aside, I've also been thinking about the issue of writing about race or other discrimination from the point of view of a character with a cultural background and ideas different from my own. Would anybody be interested in reading something like that?)

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

When did you last read a post railing against discimination of the Roma?
Well there was that one Snarry fic with gypsies...

But seriously, great post. European racism is complex and very differently treated than in the US, and I realize that because of fandom I know more abotu American racism than I do about the French kind. I think we tend to be much more in denial about having a problem in Europe in general. In the US things can be very bad but it feels like there's always at least someone pointing a finguer at it, talking about it. I wish it was more often the case here.

Would anybody be interested in reading something like that?
Yes, of course.

[winter]

*nods* Precisely my point. Come to think of it, I could post a good bit about French racism issues based just on my Paris experience. Being in a class filled with fresh immigrants kind of dropped me straight into all the issues in miniature, especially the bit where I was considered dangerous and simple just because of being Polish.

I think I will write that second post, if only because I'm so prone to writing pre-modern characters. And because fyrie started full time work and I lack for distractions ;)

re: International Blog Against Racism Week: Central European perspective

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Interesting reading. But as a citizen of the US, I must say that there is a lot more going on over here in terms of racism, then just the black/white thing. I will mention that I live in the southeastern part of the USA, and until recent decades, it was indeed pretty much just a black-white thing here, but with more people of different skin colours and cultures moving in, I see more of the different types of racism that you are talking about. Jews are considered as "rich", therefore a target; Hispanics are mostly thought to be illegal (the fact that there are at least 20 million illegal immigrants in the US makes this worse) and most citizens and legal immigrants (espcially the legal Hispanic ones!) want them out of here; Muslims by and large are looked upon with fear and loathing (because of 9/11), even when it's obvious that they left a horrible place for some peace; and Asians look so different that again there is a problem in perception.

I think that the biggest problem though (besides the intense dislike of illegal immigrants, at least half of whom came here legally, but now have expired green cards or expired student IDs) is that all these new people pretty much keep to themselves, refuse to learn English, want signs and government forms in their language, keep to their own cultures, and quite often live in what amounts to ghettos, meaning that pretty much no other people of a different culture or race live in the same neighborhood. And in recent years, blacks have tended to stay within black neighborhoods and are now calling for segregation in schools. (Considering that in the metro areas of the SE, most public schools have as a majority black students, this call seems strange. At any rate, many white and Asian parents send their children to private schools which provide a better education, supposedly. Public schools here are seen quite often as catering to those who don't care to learn.)

All these newer people would meet with less racism if they embraced more American ideas, I suspect. My ancestors, even those who immigrated to this country less than a hundred years ago, came here for freedom, and were quite happy to embrace American ideas about freedom, whilst still keeping some of their old country's cultural ideas. Many of the newer immigrants are seen as not being interested in the ideals that this country was founded upon, but only in making money. (My grandfather was keen to become a citizen, but many people who come here are not interested!) Not there's anything wrong with capitalism, per se, but many of these newer people are interested only in the almighty dollar, and refuse to accept/understand that it is the ideals of this country that allow capitalism to flourish.

I must think of the Chinese in this context. They still claim to be Communists, but the economics of their country scream capitalism. Their communistic ideals are being eroded, and so the gov fights even harder to hang on to them, but it's a losing battle.

Re: International Blog Against Racism Week: Central European perspective

[winter]

On the other hand, is it the fault of the different that they don't conform, or the fault of the majority that being different means you get treated worse? I would think that "Oh, behave just like whites and you'll get treated just like whites" is a less admirable attitude than "Let's all get along".

I would separate two types of racism - one is the very dangerous ideological "those people are lesser than us and are our enemies" thing (American black/white thing, European antisemitism and persecution of the Roma), and the other is everyday intolerance: "They're not like us, so why should we treat them well?"

The ideal society would be one in which you're not considered not to be entitled to normal participation just because you speak a different language or have a different family model. The "different = dangerous" connection is basic instinct, but we've managed to subjugate many others, so no harm in trying with this one, too. I think there's work to be done there on both sides of the divide.

(And that ties nicely into the essay I'm writing now, I think. Reading about other cultures means they're not so much strangers anymore, so fiction has a large role to play there.)

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Great post. As someone who's taken a fair amount of interest in how European society approaches racism over the last year, I have to say that it seems completely different from the way America constructs, supports, and deals with racist stereotypes, and seems much closer to the way regionalism, casteism and linguistic prejudice operates in India. The European variety bleeds right down from the viciously anti-Semitic, white-supremacist, and [now] anti-Arab/anti-immigrant sectarianism to the common but deeply ingrained prejudices of communities that have little power to hurt on an individual level but build up to something much bigger and darker. Recently the president of a football club in Italy came under fire for calling a Romanian player on a rival team a "cunning gypsy." He later called it "affectionate, almost a joke." In India, which is basically a lump of different religions and languages united by some pretty precarious geography, this is exactly how the incident would have been catalogued, explained away and forgotten.

Racism in Europe comes in so many different colours because it isn't actually a real continent or political entity in the sense that the US is. The communal mentality is too deeply ingrained in old civilisations for prejudice to die out. It's a pity that basic decency doesn't pass itself down, father to son, in the same way.

It's not an excuse. People have got to learn their lessons. We're supposed to be progressing through history.

[winter]

Oh, exactly - the lack of unification and so much history adds up to people thinking it's normal and nothing should be done about it. Still, one can live in hope, and most of all draw attention to it. After enough beating over the head, people might notice it's not a moral right.

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I knew there was some racism in Europe (especially stress about Middle-eastern and Indian immigrants), but it always seemed to be a different creature than here in the US. Maybe it's because most of us are not "native"? When you're white, there's a lot of guilt thrown on you about issues like slavery and the treatment of the Native Americans--even if your family didn't show up here until long after that era was over and done with. (Disclaimer: while my father's family DID in fact come here during the 20th century, my mother is descended from some of the early settlers in Jamestown, VA. Yes, they had slaves. Yes, they took land from Indians. No, I don't think I owe anyone reparations for acts committed well over a century or two or three ago.)

Actually, I tend to take issue with the term "white" because there is a heck of a big difference in being from England as opposed to being from, say, Russia, or Italy, or Norway. But then again, so many of us Americans are "mutts" that I guess they had to call us something. Actually, there used to be quite a prejudice by Anglo-Americans towards the more recent European immigrants. H.P. Lovecraft's writings are filled with that kind of racism and it was standard for his time. I got angry reading one of my mother's family histories, because the preface warned the readers about diluting their "English" blood by marrying immigrants. And that was written in 1973!

I understand about the Roma prejudice and the antisemitism--my grandparents brought over those attitudes when they came here from Hungary. But antisemitism isn't as open here, especially after the Holocaust, and the Roma are so rare in America that most people don't care about them one way or another.

And yes, a story written about the subject would be interesting to read. You always address issues in fresh ways, and I'd be eager to see what you do with the subject.

[winter]

And here we run into the Europe-as-one-country thing again - the issues you mention are British ones. France has its trouble with immigrants from Northern Africa, in Germany Turks are the most visible minority, and over here that'd be, in various ways, the Vietnamese, Arabs and people from the Balkans. Plus culturally ingrained nonsense like Polish antisemitism - between the war and the 1968 events, IIRC there's something like thirty thousand Jews left, if we define by religion.

And if you want intra-white prejudice, you should hear older-generation Germans and Poles ~_~ My grandparents loved the music from Elisabeth, but requested a copy of the Japanese soundtrack because they didn't want to listen to it in German.

And thinking of it, in a way in Europe the issue is so multi-lateral that it's harder to discuss - every society has prejudice of some sort against just about everyone else in proximity and whole groups it designates as "not entirely human like us".

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post. Much appreciated since I'm still seething about the suggestion that only Americans are racist in the last debacle. I know our particularly cutlural brand of racism is not like other countries, and some countries are better off than we are, but we're not the only place with issues. It was nice to read your post and have a different perspective and look at it.

[winter]

I think that the one unique feature of American racism is actually the fact that it's self-aware and compounded by culturally assimilated guilt. You're the place most aware of its own issues, really.

[rkold.livejournal.com]

Like reynardine I generally take issue with the term "white" as well. While my skin is a light color and my great grandparents came from Europe, being Jewish really does still leave you as something as an outsider. I mean I'm from the NY but when I was a kid we had an old car that we were slow to get rid of and left in our backyard. (It was not viewable from the street) My parents live in a well off neighborhood, across the street and a few houses down was another Jewish couple and up the block a few houses were two African-American families, so it wasn't a segregated area. However, someone(s) still snuck into our yard and drew swastikas on the old dead car back there.

I would say in general Jews in the US are more accepted overall and antisemitism is frowned upon, but it is still alive and well. Though it is nothing compared to Europe. My husband wears a yarmulke all the time and I would worry about our safety in most countries in Europe doing this. I don't feel that way in the US.

I do think in general people here are more open about talking about racism and I would argue most people don't want to be called one and take pains not to be, while a song in a musical, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" really does ring true here in NY.

As for what people give up, it's a touchy subject. I know my in-laws thought I ought to follow the caveat "When in Rome" and not follow my "strange" Jewish traditions when with them. However, I am also acutely aware of the language losses between generations. My great grandparents all knew Yiddish and so did my grandparents. My dad and mom understood some but couldn't speak it. I and my siblings know a few scattered words more than the general public, but that's it.

[winter]

I really do think that awareness of the problem is the first step to fixing it. If you know that what you're doing is wrong, you're that little bit less likely to act on it and pass on those attitudes.

And cultural loss is a painful thing. I keep meaning to learn Russian, still :(

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

I agree with other posters that American racism is very much aware of itself (most of the time). That is one thing that can lead to improvements, as being conscious of a problem is often the first part to fixing it.

I had interesting experiences in American vs. European racism when I was in Spain this past semester. Racism there is blatant in a way that would not be allowed in the U.S. Most of my group was white, but two or three of my classmates were black, and they were often stared at when in public. One girl was very annoyed by this, but she was more sensitive in general; the other two mostly ignored or laughed at it.

I think in Spain much of the mentality is "different means bad." I don't know how large the Jewish population in Spain is, as all the Jews were either kicked out or forced to assimilate in the late 1400s, and Spain is still primarily a Catholic country, even though many people are not baptized and do not attend church regularly.

The Roma there are called Gitano, and are looked down upon as dangerous and poor. Much of this mindset is due to cultural differences that have centuries-old roots. It is true that some of the Gitano function only as pickpockets, but others follow laws as much as you and me. Again, appearance comes into play--one day a person told one of my classmates that she "looked like a Gitano" because she has darker coloring.

Spain also has an enormous immigrant issue. At this time most of the immigrants are from northern Africa (ex. Morocco) who come over in poor excuses for rafts and boats. Some of them are legal, but many are not. They have their communities everywhere, even under bridges, and have the jobs that the Spanish do not want, such as farm work during horrible heat. On the one hand, many Spanish fear that the immigrants are taking their jobs away. On the other hand, the birth rate in Spain is going down and there was a study done showing how many millions of immigrants would be needed to fill all the jobs that there are not enough Spaniards for.

As for me though, I cannot offer many personal experiences, as the majority of my family came to the U.S. over 100 years ago from countries such as Sweden and Germany. We're WASPs (with the exception that I am a White Anglo Saxon Pagan, not Protestant!)

I very much enourage the idea of writing from the viewpoint of a person with a different background that yourself. I know that it's tricky to pull off, and it satisfying when it works. I hope that you'll post it when you're finished.

[sukeban.livejournal.com]

I had interesting experiences in American vs. European racism when I was in Spain this past semester. Racism there is blatant in a way that would not be allowed in the U.S. Most of my group was white, but two or three of my classmates were black, and they were often stared at when in public.

As an Spaniard, I would like to point out that as recently as ten years ago we didn't have much of racial diversity, and many people have not digested the *extremely* sudden increase in immigrant population. We've gone from an imperceptible amount to over a 10% immigrant population in just a few years.

I don't know how large the Jewish population in Spain is, as all the Jews were either kicked out or forced to assimilate in the late 1400s

Oh, *worse* than that. People of Jewish ancestry, even when converted, were the most important target of the Inquisition: if your neighbours noticed that you didn't eat pork or rested on Saturdays, you'd be carted away, tortured and executed or sent to galleys. Moreover, "blood cleanliness" was a requisite for government positions and pretty much any other good job. There isn't much that the Nazis did that we didn't do four centuries earlier.

The Roma there are called Gitano, and are looked down upon as dangerous and poor.

In the past 30 years most of the gypsies have integrated in society, and it is not uncommon now to see them in college or in "regular" jobs. The gypsies you see begging in the street or wiping car windshields come mostly from Romania (and, frankly, when I went to Transylvania I was shocked at the level of casual racism thrown at them), while our gypsies are more likely to have shops in flea markets or drive a van around the countryside selling clothes or food in villages.

Some of them are legal, but many are not.

There have been two massive legalisation processes in the last 4 or 5 years, and nowadays most immigrants are legal, they have their own associations that provide legal counsel (e.g. ATIME is the association of workers from Morocco), and can avoid the most blatant type of exploitation. There are still cases of farm workers living in appalling conditions, but they are often denounced in the media.

The irony about Spanish discrimination of immigrant workers is that many of the older generation migrated to Germany in the 60s for the same reasons that people from South America or Africa are coming here now. It just makes the stupidity of this all more clear.

If you are interested, The New Spaniards from John Hopper is a very good book, and updated to fairly recent events, with a whole chapter devoted to immigration. I recommend it earnestly to anyone who wants to get Spanish society.

[alice_montrose]

When did you last read a post railing against discrimination of the Roma? Or Romanians even - in Poland, those two are often lumped together and passed off as thieves and beggars.

That's because the Roma that have emigrated from Romania are usually up to no good wherever they go. It's not that there aren't respectable Roma... it's because they don't want to change and adapt to society. Right now in Romania, I think 60% of the Roma population is employed; but their numbers are rapidly growing (and gods, do they have us Romanian nationals beat at natality rates ^^;;;) and about half of the criminal elements in our society happen to be of Roma nationality. Don't ask em why that is - maybe it's in their genes, or maybe they've gotten away with it so many times in the past that they will not change.

But then, they go abroad, and because they are Romanians, it's what they are called in the media. Let's face it, "Romanian citizen of Roma nationality" is a mouthful - so let's just call them all Romanians, shall we. This, in turn, causes discrimination against any Romanian person going abroad by sole virtue of a well-known and acknowledged fact: "Romanians are thieves and criminals, and we don't want them in our society".

It's the same way that we (Romanians as a people) look at Bulgarians as car thieves, and at Hungarians as nationalist extremists. But I won't get into the Hungarian nationality issue, because it's still a sensitive topic here and frankly I don't think I can approach it without being biased... and sounding like I'm discriminating. Which, in truth, I would be (we have perfectly nice Hungarians as well as the other category).

OT: Did you get my envelope yet, or do I bite off some Post Office heads next week?

[winter]

Yes, I did get the envelope today :D Thank you so very much!

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Having read every one else's replies, I find all this sadly fascinating. As far back as high school, I realised that even if there were only "white" people, those same people would find some way to discriminate against others. And I see that this is true in Europe. :( Just read an article on CNN.com about how the English hate ginger-headed people. It's true in the US as well. As a redheaded descendant of Irish (and Scots), I find this upsetting, but totally believable, as my whole family on both sides has had to deal with this same prejudice all our lives. It's why I dye my hair blonde, and my brother is glad that his hair is now more brown.

As far as racism goes, at times I really think that it is more a matter of classism. There's a myth in America that everyone is part of the great middle-class, but that's a false perception. There are many homeless people and there are many rich people who could help, but most choose not to. Many studies have indicated over the years that the vast majority of donations to charity come from the middle and even the lower class! And these studies were looking at per capita, as well as total amounts given. There was a study of the metro Atlanta counties done back in the spring which showed that most charitable donations did not come from the richer portions of the 15 county area. That's sad.

[cleverthylacine]

Is THAT why there are all those people in the HP fandom who are convinced that some people like the Malfoys better than the Weasleys because the Weasleys are redheads and the Malfoys are blonds? This has ALWAYS confused me, because I am definitely in the group that's fonder of the Malfoys, but I used to be a Darkover fan, and all the coolest characters in the Darkover series were redheads, and I couldn't imagine that being a reason for preferring the Malfoys--my reasons for liking the Malfoys (and my reasons for disliking most of the Weasleys) have nothing to do with hair colour and I could never imagine why anyone would think this.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

Yes, racism definitely is well and alive in Europe. And like others have pointed out, it takes different forms in different countries. In Finland, people tend to be very prejudiced against Russians - many basically seem to consider that all Russian men are criminals and all women are whores, or alternatively they'll rage at them for stealing our land back in the 40's. We seemingly have less of a racism problem with immigrants etc. but that's only because we don't have nearly as many immigrants as most other European countries. Most people who haven't been born Finnish don't seem to care to move here, and perhaps it's not a wonder. ;) But when we do get immigrants, people can be quite racist - and since we haven't had much diversity for a long time, people aren't at all used to dealing with it.

Fear and dislike of what is different seems to be a deeply ingrained instinct in people, so it's quite difficult to overcome. But denying the problem certainly doesn't help.

It was an interesting experience, though, when I lived in France for nine months, and there were lots of North African immigrants there... Despite very much wanting not to be racist, after a few months I was treating with suspicion any young man who looked North African, avoiding looking at them and preferring to stay away from them. Because every single time some man made a pass at me about two seconds after seeing me, in none too dignified and pleasant manner, it was someone who looked North African. I absolutely hate when men do that, and find it threatening, so after a while it was impossible not to note that it was always the people belonging to a certain group who did that. And though I knew that there might be such men who are actually perfectly well-behaved and respect women, it seemed safer to assume the worst. It does get problematic when people feel they have a good reason to consider many of a particular group to be somehow threatening or disrespectful of their core values.

[winter]

*nods* We lived in France for six months when I was 9, and while I came out of it with the firm conviction that people can be angels or bastards no matter what the skin colour (and being a racial minority in school was an eye-opener), Mother still treats North African-looking people with suspicion. Maybe the reason I don't is because I'm generally not scared of much, physically - being my height and fitness does tend to come in handy ;)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I think the European attitude towards racism is very different because we are so involved with racism (or maybe something like ethnophobia would describe it better?) with our next door neighbours that we can barely wrap our head around basic white/black racism. Which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but it's not as much in our faces and in our news because they are just a lower percentage points that whatever minority we currently have an axe to grind with.

At the same time the European ethnophobic issues ARE to me fundamentally different on a bunch of levels for example:

- To a large part they cover immigrants. Immigrants who at least at one point chose to come in a country from their homecountry. Vastly different from slaves being removed from their homecountries against their will or Native Americans who never had a different home country.

- A lot of European ethnic struggle goes against people who actually don't look that different and who are different only in potentially culture and/or language and/or religion. So melting into the main culture is at least possible. If you want to, you can reasonably assume that three generations in nobody is even going to notice your foreign name anymore. But the American situation shows people that have been there over 200 years and who still have problems being integrated because they are visibly recognizable, even if they have completely adapted in name, culture, language and religion.

- Usually there is a lot of history involved. Some countries are former colonial powers, others aren't. Some of the people we have issues with we used to go to war against or to war with together.

[winter]

And to that I say, Poles and Jews again. Because it's not an issue of giving up the culture (and more than culture, religion - doesn't America guarantee freedom of it?) - most people actively discriminated against in the past were the ones who did dare show their heads out of the ghettos, to get into universities and try to say they're Polish Jews and care about Poland, often converts with just Jewish ancestry. It's an issue of people, now, passing on lists of "real names" of famous people who they say are secretly Jewish and working to destroy the world. It's an issue of a representative of our Minstry of Education, weeks ago, visiting Israel and exclaiming that he'd never thought a rabbi could be blue-eyed. Recent issue? This has been going on for six hundred years. Six hundred years since, after getting kicked out of Spain, Spanish Jews came to Poland as the one land that didn't persecute them openly.

I think that the problem on both ends is that people are operating, and passing judgement, based on too little information.

Thank you.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm here via metafandom, and I just want to thank you for this post. I always cringe when my fellow Americans display consummate ignorance about the complexities of issues of race and ethnicity in Europe, particularly Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and going east, the former Soviet republics. I majored in Russian and Eastern European history in college, and my mother's side of the family are Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, so...I grew up with perhaps a greater awareness of how many cleavages are extant in European society that just simply don't cognate to the black/white divide we have here in the United States. It's consummately oversimplistic to try to template concepts of American and British racism onto Europe; in fact, it's stupid, in my opinion, born of ignorance.

Look at how the American public viewed the Bosnian war, with mass news outlets describing it as "too complex" and "incomprehensible." To me, steeped in the history of Yugoslavia, it was a very straightforward tragic breakdown of a multiethnic society collapsing into horrific war, in the hallowed tradition of the Balkans, but most of my friends that aren't in academia were completely baffled. How can "white" people be so hateful of each other, they asked, and I'd just point them to the writings of Slavenka Drakulic and Ivo Banac, shaking my head in dismay.

Americans need to remember that we are a young country compared to anything and everything in Europe, and that many nations in Europe still aren't nearly as hetergenous as we are.

Re: Thank you.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I often wonder if one problem with the race debate is that on some level Europeans just don't get Americans. They don't get black Americans and they don't get white Americans either, because European ways of dealing with things just run on very different lines.

And to us flat out hate for certain groups of societies just work differently and they might differ strongly from country to country. We often barely know how to deal with our own problems and the problems of our direct neighbouring countries and so maybe it feels weird to us to be asked to be dealing with the problems of other countries as well. We barely understand our own history and the history or our next door neighbors and current immigrants and so taking a stand on American history is just weird. We know some American history (probably more than the other way around). But we usually get the Uncle Tom's Hut, Martin Luther King cliffnotes version. (and that aside from the fact that the average European seems to be much more creeped out by the killing of American natives than I have ever seen any US American being) But that doesn't mean that we have a clear understanding of how the day to day dealings work. Especially since the closest we have at the moment is dealings with regular immigration of people of a different skin color and there are some rather core differences between the problems that arise from that than there are from the typical American black/white divide. We don't have the same problems of people of a different skin color still being discriminated against after 200 years not because we are better but because the black people we do have are so recent that they still fall under the dealing with immigrants problematic.

[mirabilelectu.livejournal.com]

This is a very good post, particularly because it offers little Western-European me and actual (however small) insight to Poland. I see other people illustrating the situation in their countries, and I'll make use of the occasion to say a bit about the Netherlands [not Holland; that's the regionalism again!].

We have several major groups of immigrants, apart from our native minority of Frisians, and I'd argue they fall into two groups: former colonials/Antilleans and genuine immigrants (I say this because most of those who came here upon the indepence of Surinam chose to remain Dutch citizens, and the Dutch and mixed Dutch/Indonesians ("Indo's") and Moluccans were kicked out of the Republic of Indonesia). (And once upon a time about 120,000 Jews lived here; then World War II happened and over a hundred thousand never returned from the camps. Our helpful population register told the Nazis exactly who was Jewish and the other Pillars of our pretty self-segregated society [Jews, Socialists, Liberals, Catholics and Protestants all had their own Pillar, meaning shops, papers, radio stations, schools, etc.*] mostly didn't do a thing because, well Not Our People.)

Our current tensions are about Islamic immigrants (mostly originally Turkish and Moroccan) and poor young people who've come here from the Antilles. In fact, a former minister proposed a law to send criminal Antilleans (they are proportionally the most imprisoned in the Netherlands) back to the Antilles, even though the islands are part of the kingdom!

*As an aside, I believe this phenomenon is at least in part responsible for the initial failed integration of Islamic immigrants: initially it was thought better not to give them too much connection to Dutch society, because they'd be going again, and when it became clear they wouldn't be here temporarily but forever, and with their families, still no effort was made by the government to teach the our language so they could make an effort to become connected to Dutch society. I think the idea then was that there would be an Islamic Pillar along side all the others.

And as an aside to the aside, the exact same reasoning is being used to justify keeping the newest wave of immigrant workers -- Poles! -- out of mainstream society, because it's obviously worked so well in the past.

[winter]

Thing is, I dunno if anyone ever hit on the right model for a multi-ethnic society, one that won't have anyone feeling left out and resentful. This semi-isolationism doesn't work, melting pot doesn't work, nothing else really does work. Not unless you change the underlying paradigm of "we can only get along and cooperate if we are the same" and get everyone to agree on it.

[bond-girl.livejournal.com]

I am here from metafandom. I am glad someone from Europe piped in :) I am Swiss French of mostly Russian and Asian blood, who has recently moved to US and is now trying to understand what makes the Americans tick and what makes them tock. So far, I can tell you they often have no idea about the depth and the complexity of European "Auslaender" issues and we are clueless when thrown into the daily reality of US racial dynamics.

[winter]

I just got ticked off when reading both people from Europe dismissing it as a "strange American thing" and Americans saying "but we can pretend there's no racism, just like in Europe". Only place prejudice doesn't exist is Utopia.

[alias_sqbr]

Here from metafandom, and really glad you write this post. Your own experiences were really interesting, and it's inspired so much other interesting discussion!

I am personally quite interested in Poland since my maternal grandmothers family left Poland at the turn of the last century due to the pogroms, and my maternal grandfathers family are ukranian and irish Catholics who entirely disowned him for marrying a jew, so I was always brought up to despise racism and intolerance ..except maybe against those horrible antimsemetic poles and catholics *rolls eyes*

As an australian I think our attitudes to race are different again to europe and america: unlike europe the white majority is pretty racially and culturally homogenous(*), and unlike America we don't have this large oppressed somewhat racially segregated segment of the population always agitating to make sure noone forgets about racism(**). As with pretty much all first world countries (and presumably a lot of poorer countries, you just don't encounter so many people from them online) we have the ever present resentment towards immigrants and their descendents despite the fact that pretty much everyone is either an aborigine or has only been here a few generations.

(*)Though there has been a process of integration as Mediterranean immigrants have gone from "untrustworthy brown people" to "nice white people". This may have something to do with the end of the white australia policy, so that they are no longer the "least white" group coming in.
(**)Since the aboriginals are too successfully downtrodden to make their voices heard, and none of the other racial groups seem to organise politically (not counting religious groups) Huh. You know that never struck me before.

[winter]

*nods* I think the reminders like Jews in Europe and the black movement in the US are good for general societal attitudes and awareness. Awareness being key - it does no-one any good to pretend that it's all fine and everyone's getting along.

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating, especially to me as an American. I'd like to clarify something about American perceptions of racism: we are aware of many cleavages besides the black/white one, but the word "racism" is more closely tied to that than to the others, because of its history and immediacy. I think that "race" and culture are separated a little more in people's minds here than they are in many places discussed above. When I hear "racism," I and most people I know (I'm from the mid/southern East Coast) think of skin color and the black/white divide (which itself is more nuanced than its name, since we generally define people as black even if they have one "black" parent and one "white" one). But when we talk about divisions among peoples, issues of immigration do come up very quickly. So some of it might be a difference in language it's couched in, not reality.

We aren't without cleavages along immigration lines here, and we don't generally shy away from acknowledging them, but the word "race" has come to be so dominated by strong feelings concerning black and white that using it pulls the mind there.

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

Another issue: in the comments and other discussions, I have heard many white people defend themselves against the hostility, racism, or simple pressure to feel "guilty" they have felt from non-white, usually black people. This usually means disavowing responsibility for our race's past. It's the "I haven't participated in this wrong, so I should not be obliged to personally address it" argument. On one level it's true. But it's harder to see that even if we weren't the ones to enslave others and steal land, we _have_ benefited from those events and others have suffered their effects.

Those of us who are descended from slave-holders or people who moved onto Native American land probably have families who have been landowners ever since. This began unfairly, and the current landowner is profiting from that unfairness. Conversely, descendants of the person who worked the land but was prevented from owning it, or of the person from whom it was stolen, don't have an equal potential for inheriting assets to those whose families have had longer to build up land, capital, and education. It isn't in any way the current inheritor's fault, but it _is_ unfair privilege that stems from history. I feel it is not right to simply accept what we have as justly our own simply because a few generations have elapsed since legalized unjustness gave us a head start.

Those whose ancestors came here more recently also enjoy a system of white privilege. This system stems from history, so we cannot ignore historical wrongs or dismiss them from being relevant to the present. We are none of us born into a world of equal opportunity, nor are we born with the same familial assets. Some of us are benefiting from a head start or a boost in life.

I agree with what etranger said above:
I think you're mistaken if you think this is about the past. At least I don't think people should be made guilty for something that happened in the past. I think they should be made aware and take responsability (something which i must do as much as anyone else and which I often struggle with as well btw) for what happens in the present. Racism is current reality. Black and White people in the US don't have the same life expectency. They don't suffer the same level of penalties when they're found guilty of a crime. These are statistical realities. You're not personnally responsible for this. But being White you do enjoy priviledges that others don't. I do too. No, I don't know either how you can fix something like this, nor do I think feeling guilty is a very productive way to start either. But aknowledging you have priviledge is, I guess, a start.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I have heard many white people defend themselves against the hostility, racism, or simple pressure to feel "guilty" they have felt from non-white, usually black people. This usually means disavowing responsibility for our race's past. It's the "I haven't participated in this wrong, so I should not be obliged to personally address it" argument. On one level it's true. But it's harder to see that even if we weren't the ones to enslave others and steal land, we _have_ benefited from those events and others have suffered their effects.

I totally understand that. But I also think that that is precisely where the American/European breakdown happens. Because Europeans might acknowledge that white US Americans have a historical debt to black Americans. But they look at themselves and think that their hands on involvement and profit from slavery is kind of small compared to all the other shit they pulled.

For us it's more:
White US Americans have a historic debt to Black US Americans because of slavery
Germans and Austrians a historic debt to Jews because of the holocaust
Austrians have a historic debt to Yuguslavia and Hungary because they used to rule them
British have a historic debt to India and Pakistan because they were their colonial power
France has a historic debt to Northern Africa because they were their colonial power
The Dutch have a historic debt to their former colonies in Africa
Spain and Portugal have a historic debt to South America because they had some major immigration to there and did their share of slaughter and unfair rule
Canadians might have a historical debt to their Native Americans
Australians have a historic debt to their Aboriginals
Turkey might have a historic debts to various ethnic groups from Armenians to Greeks to Kurds.

That doesn't mean that white people collectively (including everything from Irish to Russians) might not have a collective debt against black people (and I'm talking everything from Africans in Africa, to GIs stationed in Germany). It's just that when we deal it we usually have to deal with it in our own countries (and there they usually pale in numbers compared to other types of immigrants we have more issues with). The idea is more that all countries have their very own horrible debts to certain people and sometimes we aren't even very good about paying or even acknowledging those.

[kamitra.livejournal.com]

I remember an Italian guy mentioning that he would get discriminated if he went elsewhere in Europe like France, so it was more comfortable being lumped together as "Gaijin" in Japan, or just "Haole" or "European" in Hawaii.

When I mentioned that to my mom, she thought it was funny, but she just nodded her head. After all, there are many issues of racism that occur here that outside groups don't seem to care about, like the different groups of Filipino that seem to sometimes dislike each other, the Okinwawan/Japanese split, or even different sections of Hawaiian.

I'm not quite sure what it does to a person to live in a place where people care, but don't care about your racial background. When asked what race a person is, I've heard "everything" and "I don't know" as valid answers.

Even then, there are so many issues that go on where I live that I don't even know where to start.

[sukeban.livejournal.com]

Oh, when it comes to Italy, many people from the northern, richer part of Italy despise the people from the poorer southern half with a passion. The Lega Nord, one of Berlusconi's allies, aims to have as little to do with the southern provinces as they can get away with.

[fionn-a-bhair.livejournal.com]

It can be very hard to explain these problems to outsiders I think. I'm Irish, and it's literally true that I had not seen a black person in the flesh until I was eight or nine years old - which makes a lot of the commentary on race in fandom kind of baffling to me, as I just don't have that in my cultural background. We didn't have black people - we didn't get immigrants, of any variety. We didn't have Jews (well, we did for a few years in the forties and fifties, but the population was really too small to sustain itself, and I think most of them emigrated to the States eventually), or Muslims, or even Orthodox Christians until very, very recently. I mean, when I was a child, it was assumed that my brothers and I would have to emigrate ourselves, probably to America. It really isn't all that long ago.

All that's changed now, of course. We had the Celtic Tiger and all that, and somehow we finally became, you know, economically developed and all that jazz. The speed of the change is astonishing. Dublin has a Chinatown now - or at least the beginnings of one - and streets full of Polish bars, and substantial African and Muslim minorities, and all of this within the space of ten years. Now admittedly, the cheek of any Irish person complaining about immigration is pretty astonishing, given our history, but it did happen. There've been some very nasty outbreaks of racism (mainly in the most economically deprived areas - I've always wondered how racism and classism feed off each other) in the last few years. It seems to have calmed down quite considerably.

Plus, there's been all the fun in Northern, which even I don't fully understand. Certainly that's a primarily religious division, but from what I've seen and heard, I don't really see any qualitative difference between that sectarianism and true racism.

(As for the leprauchauns? I have no idea what that's about - they don't even play that big a role in Irish mythology to be honest - but they don't bother me especially. We've had much, much worse stereotypes thrown at us back in the day, and those stupid leprauchauns things don't hurt anyone (well, they're pretty ugly to look at). Besides, without leprauchauns I wouldn't have had the experience of being asked for directions to find leprauchauns by an American tourist.)

[winter]

In Poland, it's a see-saw - before World War Two, we had only about two-thirds ethnic Poles according to various statistics. Between border movements and resettlement, we ended up with 98% ethnic Poles until 1989, and now IIRC we have one of the largest Vietnamese populations outside Vietnam. It's telling how different various immigrants are treated - Arabs and Asians generally get treated well, blacks tend to get stares and sometimes knee-jerk racist reactions from the football crowd just because they're uncommon, while Romanians, Russians, Belariussians and Ukrainians etc trigger old familiar prejudices at times.

I think the one difference in the Northern Ireland situation is that at sight (and partly even with accent) there's no way to tell if someone's Protestant or Catholic unless they declare their allegiance by words, actions or dress, so it's a bit harder to discriminate against either party. And hey, at least with Poles around you can finally buy decent bread ;)

(Sorry. Was stuck in Ireland for three months on an exchange program in 2004 and got sick and tired of not being able to buy any bread that didn't have the consistency of cotton wool.)

[eska-rina.livejournal.com]

As a Dane, thank you for writing this up.

In DK we more or less hate everybody who are not Danish (that, to us from Sealand, includes the people from Jutland*), but above all we have the Muslims/people from the Middle East. And alot of people don't get why there is something wrong with it - they hear about the few Muslims who are criminel and/or doesn't "fit" into our society, and then assume that the rest are like that. And this includes people who knows Muslims who aren't criminal and/or is a part of our society. It's so fucking stupid.


*And the other way 'round. And against the other islands. And what have I.
I think this is one of the reason why many Danes don't really see their racism - a lot of our racism are jokes.

[winter]

*nods* It's an instinct, to stereotype and discriminate because it's the easier, safe strategy. It takes effort to see beyond it and empathise with someone different. And it happens everywhere.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.

My sister adopted a little girl from Poland, 11 years ago. She spent a few weeks with a Polish host family before being allowed to take her daughter home to the states. She got very close to them, as they shared what was obviously an emotional time in her life.

The host father had a habit of tucking my sister's hair under her hat before they would go outside. She thought it was sweet; it was winter, so much colder than she was ever used to in Florida, after all. When she'd been there a week, he finally explained to her why he was doing it. She's Jewish, and her hair is long, and curly and frizzy. He didn't want anyone to see it, because he was afraid for her safety.

He took her and my father to Aushwitz. My dad still won't talk about it.

[winter]

It's not that bad here - I think the perceptions are worse than the actual physical violence (especially from the POV of Israeli visitors, who seem to be in total psychosis during their visits here). Still, idiots happen, and so many people are prejudiced without any reason at all, still believing in idiocies like an international Jewish conspiracy to destroy Poland.

(And at times, I have the same knee-jerk homicidal reaction as a recent white immigrant to the US being accused to slave ownership. That would be when anyone describes Auschwitz etc as a Polish concentration camp.)

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

So forgive me if I don't overlook these issues, if I don't close off my creativity in a garden where I pretend race doesn't matter at all, just because "it's an American issue". I'm too hot-blooded for that, too prone to overthinking to ignore the fact that if something conforms to the usual tropes because it's easier, it reinforces them in the reader, the watcher.

I think Americans would like our racial problems to be unique, because in some way that means we can't help it. I have the same impression of Germans and their lionization of Daniel Goldhagen. (He was a popular historian who emphasized the unique nature of German anti-Semitism.) When societies do that, they deny the actual mechanisms of popularization of stereotypes, political use of stereotypes and systematic discrimination.

As a Jew I was brought up to believe that Polish anti-Semitism was inherent to Polish society. But this isn't true. Poland is just like any other country: anti-Jewish ideas were systematically exploited by certain right-wing political elements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as part of a certain vision of national unification. The fact that those ideas persist and have currency is a measure of the failure of liberal elements in Polish society to create a counter-vision of civic nationalism. It's not a big mystery. (My friend wrote a book on the history of Polish anti-Semitism (http://unp.unl.edu/bookinfo/5017.html) in which she picked apart the history of how it got this way--I liked the way she doesn't demonize Poles in the process.)

Even though expressions of overt racism have lost their respectability in US society, the discriminatory social mechanisms persist, and the less obvious ideological manifestations do, too. A key mechanism of racism is segregation. There are a lot of things that just could not go on if they were visible to the entirety of the society. On the other hand, if we make victim-blaming sufficiently subtle and omnipresent, then no one sees the racism.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Great post.

I think the leprauchan with pot of gold and Jew counting money icons don't really fit as analogues at all--so it took me a while to get what you were expressing here.

The leprechaun is a mythical being--a cultural artifact, not a representation of an Irish person herself. It's sort of a mascot for Irishness the Irish are promoting themselves here. However, no Jew promoted that Jew as miser magnet. It is meant to represent a Jewish person, not a fixture of self-promoted Jewish culture. That stereotype is used to promote hate of Jews--that Jews have financial powers of control to be feared--no matter how innocent a symbol of luck it seems to the Polish. It can't be severed from racist thought. So it's nothing like the leprechaun as an Irish symbol at all.

And damn, as a Jew raised in the US, I would have a heartattack over those fridge magnets--you bet! Why don't anti-racists in Poland get upset over it as well--I'm still not understanding that--could you explain?

[winter]

I meant more the beer kind of leprechauns - gotta admit they kind of perpetuate the drunken-and-superstitious Irish stereotype. That was another case of ethnic discrimination up to at least the nineteenth century - the way the English treated the Irish and the stereotypes there.

And quite frankly, I've seen a lot of people who have those fridge magnets, including a historian I know. I guess they treat the Jewish merchant as just another figure in the theatre-of-the-past that included the naive barge kid, the crusty old knight, the German merchant, and a host of other characters long gone from the cities.

I think the saving grace might be the fact that it calls to a period that ended in the eighteenth century, while the ideological (as opposed to knee-jerk fear-the-different reactions that happened everywhere in Europe) antisemitism dates from the end of the nineteenth - before, the Jews were treated more like one of the many ethnicities that made up the country. I don't know if you're familiar with Pan Tadeusz, our Great Big Patriotic Poetic Epic published in 1834, but in the story of a patriotic revival in a borderland village, an important patriotic conspirer and later the musician who plays a medley of patriotic songs that get everyone in tears as the culmination of the whole twelve-book story is the Jewish innkeeper, natch.

(Not that I'd get a magnet like that myself, of course. But then, I can imagine the connotations it would trigger in the mind of someone like you, while most people here - see my whole post - just don't think about these things.)