I live in Europe and the other day I was listening to some panel show on the radio and a guy said “Black people have this culture of-“ and a woman went “Woha!”
He responded “What?”
“I’m not comfortable with you saying black people”
“Why!?”
“Because that’s kinda racist. That’s what colonialists would call Africans. The black negros”
“But that’s what they call themselves!”
“In America. You can’t just say black people here. Are they German? French? Even if their skin color is the same they still have very different cultures depending on country. And were they born there or moved there from an African country? A Nigerian person living in Italy doesn’t have the same culture as a third generation Ugandan person living in Austria”
The rest of the panel chimed in and said yeah it’s weird to use a blanket term like that for any skin color.
I’ll have to say up front that this is not me saying that just because this is how it works in Europe that’s the right way and Americans are doing it wrong. We understand that talking about black and white people as a blanket term makes sense in the US because of how the country was created. A lot of people more or less lost their connection to their country of origin either because they were forced into the country or simply because time erased the memory. It makes sense.
But I think Americans and Europeans forget how differently we see things like nationality, skin color and culture. That’s how you end up with posts where a black American say “White people have no culture” and then white Europeans respond with “What the fuck are you talking about?” and post a million photos from traditional Europe.
People in Europe, no matter skin color, are very conscious of culture based on country because if you drive for half an hour suddenly people talk an entirely different language. The broadest you might divide people into is European, African, Middle Eastern and so on, but to just go black people, white people, and brown people comes off as racist here. Skin color is only brought up if it’s important or if that’s the only information you have to go on. Several times I’ve overheard a conversation along the lines of “Joe is American” “Who?” “The black guy who works at the station” And from then on Joe will be the American to people around him, only referred to as the black guy by people who knows literally nothing else about him. This is why Europeans ask “Where are you from?” if people have an accent or aren’t white. The answer might be as simple as “I moved here from Belarus” or a bit more complicated like “I was adopted from Korea so I’ve lived here my whole life but still have connections to my Korean family” When I lived in England I was asked ALL the time where I was from because of my accent. It was merely people showing an interest in me and trying to be polite by not oversimplifying me as a person by just calling me the Scandinavian.
Something that always perplex Europeans is how people are divided into colors in America. If you tell them Turkish people are considered brown they will lose their mind. “But…they just have dark hair? Yeah, SOME have slightly darker skin but I can get that color by being in the sun for an hour” And when Americans call Italians and Spanish people beige as opposed to white? Expect laughter.
Again, this is not me saying Americans are doing it wrong, just that it’s important to understand that this view of race and culture is not universal.
Europeans also know we fucked up a lot of places outside of Europe but we are very quick, relatively speaking, to forgive atrocities committed towards each other within Europe. Everybody were the perpetrator or victim at some point. Germany fucked up Denmark, Denmark fucked up Norway, Norway fucked the Sami peoples up. That’s why Germans aren’t immediately seen as Nazis in most European countries and why both Scandinavians and Brits joke about how Vikings used to raid England and kidnap people to use them as slaves. “We recovered, it’s fine!” This is the part that usually offends Americans because they think I’m saying black Americans should just get over it too which I’m definitely not. The American situation is not the same. I’m just explaining how it works within Europe amongst Europeans.
But yeah, I think we have a habit of forgetting how different our situations are and how some ways of categorising people make sense in one part of the world but not in others.
I think this is often forgotten, especially on tumblr
And this is also why representation of Europe and people of color in Hollywood movies can be really frustrating for European people
If Hollywood portrays Europe, it is always Britain, as the old fashioned white people, French as the lovers with the weird accent, Germans as the Nazis, Russians as the bad guys, and then we have Eastern Europe, who - according to Hollywood - all look the same and are all criminals. And more countries do not exist in Europe, according to Hollywood
And if Europeans say: „we would like the see a person of color in this movie“ Hollywood cast a black person. Which is okay of course, but for Europeans people of color means so much more
Princess Meghan is a poc f.e.
Or remember how Hollywood thought about re casting Magneto as a black man because being a Jewish Holocaust survived has no real relevance today anymore…?
