The American Politics Thread

From my point of view, racism manifests itself in different ways even within the same country. Here in the US, there is a difference between the racism targeted at black people and the one targeted at immigrants. The closest comparison I can find for the former is the kind of racism that exists in northern Italy against people from the south of the country. Though not as bad as it used to be 50 years ago, it was one of the cornerstones of the original Northern League, Salvini's party - which has now rebranded itself as a nationalist party. I have witnessed enough episodes of people from northern Italy (or even from Tuscany, where I lived for eight years) berating people from the south - very unpleasant occurrences, especially since my father was from the south. However, there has never been anything enshrined in our laws that sanctioned segregation. 

As for racism towards immigrants, that is the typical "animal" reaction of human beings against outsiders, seen as invaders of one's own territory. In many cases, it is not even motivated by differences in physical appearance: Albanians and Romanians look no different from the average Italian, but they have been the object of discrimination as much as those with darker skin. Irish people were considered "not white" (and therefore inferior) in the US, in spite of having light-coloured hair, skin and eyes.

What makes racism against blacks in the US unique in its own way is that is targeted against a sizable minority of citizens who descend from people who were brought here by force, enslaved and treated as less than human - much worse than any given group of immigrants - and then kept in a state of inferiority for decades after the abolition of slavery. In Brazil, where slavery lasted the longest, and conditions for slaves were often even worse than in the US, there has been much more racial mixing than here, and no segregation policies were ever implemented.

@Easy Money: I totally get the desire to not being lectured by outsiders about one's own country, and also the suspicion of hypocrisy directed at those who do (except that BaldJean doesn't really qualify as an "outsider"). I am German, and as I wrote earlier, the Germans indeed have a lot to do about racism in their own country.

However, I don't get the sensitivity either if anyone says anything that suggests that one country could in some respects indeed be worse than another. It's not all the same by definition. I'm not in the position to compare Germany and the US in a qualified way, but if somebody in an informed position says that Germany is bad in this or that respect, I can surely accept that view and don't feel compelled to say "it's all just human, they're all the same, and everyone should look at their own country". Rather than being offended by the view from outside, we can use it to learn, even if occasionally we disagree.  

I think that very much depends on whether the ethnicity discriminated against has visible cultural markers.  If yes, then it can be as bad as racism pretty much. When all of us blend into the modern way and wear suits or jeans as applicable to work, it is harder to spot a different ethnicity and therefore harder to discriminate against.