Comment by 0xWTF
6 days ago
Swiss as racists. Amazing. People know Americans harbor racist feelings because they are surrounded by people of many races. But it's trivial to demonstrate racism among any population as soon as you introduce an "other" of virtually any type.
No it isn’t racism as Germans had the same skin color. Keep in mind that Germans aren’t stereotypical anymore.
In Switzerland live over 41% migrants and children of migrants (just 8.4%). So the native Swiss are not just “surrounded” but greatly diminished.
It wasn’t that long ago that American racists debated whether Italians and even Irish were truly “white.” The definition of white had expanded considerably over the years.
Eastern Europeans, Jews (of course), and Russians were also at times not “white.”
Maybe we should just keep expanding it. Declare everyone white. Black people are just white people with more melanin.
Then we can be racist about aliens from outer space.
There is a distinction between racism and xenophobia, no need to assign the same label to everything. i.e. the thing about Italians was cultural an educated immigrant from Northern Italy would have been considered as white as a French (not that there a significant number of those in the US) at least.
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> It wasn’t that long ago that American racists debated whether Italians and even Irish were truly “white.” The definition of white had expanded considerably over the years. Eastern Europeans, Jews (of course), and Russians were also at times not “white.”
This idea is mostly a modern fabrication. Various more granular ethnic biases were of course present throughout American history, but those were never conflated with racial categories: in times and places where the white vs. black racial division was relevant, the ethnic groups you're referencing were always considered "white".
And the types of discrimination that people in white ethnic groups sometimes experienced was of of a type and of a degree vastly different from that experienced by black people. They're really two very distinct phenomena, and weren't evenly distributed throughout the US -- black people in the South had the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and other horrifying things to deal with, whereas white immigrant communities in the Northeast or Midwest never experienced anything remotely similar.
Yeah, sure, it's nationalism instead of racism.
Born on the wrong side of the Rhine? F right off.
No better at all. Worse, arguably.
Yes, that's how nations work. Otherwise you end up paying for the world's social security while not collecting everyone's taxes.
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Racists havent heard of Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety.
Its also why they get left behind by everyone who has.
Its an ever growing complex and unpredictable world. Sameness is not a strength in complexity theory.