A lot of European comics have a different issue: racism.
I really liked Tin Tin but I cannot pretend like the entire thing isn't incredibly racist. All of the bad guys had a certain skin colour, you could guess who was going to betray the main cast just by their colour/culture, and a lot of other cultures are portrayed like savages (sometimes literally).
The American brand of racism is very much obsessed about skin color. Historically European racism is quite different. The Nazis were deeply racist, but didn't care much about skin color in particular - they hated and murdered Slavs and Jews and Roma, groups not identified by skin color. Europe have to acknowledge and engage with this horrible past, but things like obsessing about the Dutch "Zwarte Piet" tradition is totally missing the point IMHO.
Racism is not that obviously immoral behavior depicted in Disney movies when ugly people misjudge good people for frivolous reasons. Racism is when a group of people consider another group as inferior / less worthy for some reason conflated with their biology or culture (of which most often than not very little is actually known). Racism is exactly the thoughts you have just expressed.
Upvoted for your honest contribution that sheds some light on what's racism in 2020's Europe, despite it makes me sad how easily one still associate the conduct of some members of a minority that's discriminated against with the genuine culture of that community.
You get xenophobic racism when you never see outsiders, but you also get racism when you see a bunch of outsiders in the wrong kind of context. A lot of black writers historically reported experiencing better treatment in Europe than in America, during an era where America had millions of black people and Europe had barely any. Now that Europe has millions of black immigrants, they have race issues.
If your society systemically creates a vast underclass of impoverished, poorly educated people who are oppressed as such because of their race, people are going to have their racism confirmed by those very effects. Likewise, if your society is flooded by a vast number of impoverished, poorly educated immigrants, people are going to hate the immigrants. (Judging from America's experience, this seems to be a temporary problem in most cases.) In either situation, you create racism by having more people of a different race, so long as those people are poor, segregated, or different enough to piss people off.
American racism was not as much xenophobic, it was always based on the difficulties of integrating immigrants and on the ongoing, cyclical oppression of the black population. You had some xenophobia during wartime (http://img.moonbuggy.org/superman-says-you-can-slap-a-jap/) but we tend to forget how much we hate other people after the war's over.
Europe often has a different manifestations of racial issues, in my experience. Some feel that racism there isn't so cloaked and ingrained in the culture, see [1] for example.
It was in Austria that I, a black guy, along with 2 white American guys, were stopped and interrogated by police in one of the large public parks. They peppered us with a whole bunch of questions of who we were, where were our papers, where were we coming from, where were we going, etc., before letting us leave. As a black dude, my instinct when released from the cops is to non-threateningly disengage as quickly as possible. But one of my white buddies asked the cops why they had stopped us. One cop told us point blank that there were a lot of black guys dealing heroin in the parks, and they wanted to make sure I wasn't up to no good.
It's kind of darkly comical, but I'm pretty sure if you had snapped a photo of us at the moment, you'd have seen two white dudes with their jaws agape and who knows what my face looked like. I remember clearly feeling a mix of feelings. Sure, I felt some anger and annoyance at being hassled simply because I was black. I felt embarrassed for being the reason my buddies were also hassled. Mostly, I was just like, "wow, I can't believe they admitted that". In a small way, it was a vindication of all the times I had felt marginalized because of my race, but couldn't say for sure. And as racism is so hard to explain to non-minorities, I was kind of thankful my two friends were there to witness it. Quite frankly, their minds were blown.
The target audience for the article are white Europeans living in the USA or Europe, where racism is often targeted at black Africans or African heritage.
"Racism is rooted in lack of exposure to diversity."
Uh, have a talk with South African whites sometimes.
And isn't American Deep South, with its 30-50 per cent black population, considered stereotypically racist, while you have a lot of anti-racist movements in mostly white places like Oregon and New England?
It does not work in Europe either. For example, the far-right Rassemblement National has most support on the French Riviera and Corsica, places where the Arab and African populations are very numerous. It struggles to gain support in Bretagne, where there is little immigration.
Israel is very diverse and the level of ethnic and religious violence there is massive.
I am Slavic myself; traveling around former Yugoslavia, I heard things that would absolutely stun American readers. There are people absolutely ready to slit throats of the villagers two kilometers away, just because of a different religion.
From your comments, I hear the conviction that upon meeting people from a different culture, everyone will rejoice and cherish the changes. You do not take into account a possibility that two cultures may, upon contact, develop a serious conflict, perhaps even ending in war.
Diverse places like Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, former USSR, the Caucasus, Lebanon, Iraq or lately Western European metropoles seem to be a hotbed of conflicts.
I moved to Europe somewhat recently, and I haven't seen any tolerance or understanding: people are incredibly racist towards anyone with non-white skin, and it's socially acceptable to make snide comments about race in polite society.
Oh? At least in Finland, the situation is actually the exact opposite of that. As far as I know, the same applies all over Scandinavia and Central Europe.
How did this suddenly get into racism? Gen Z would call that a "chronically online take", how else would someone get from a silly analogue of Pokémon types and abilities into racial issues?
Of course people are hired for their ability, their background is just the bonus. And again, background isn't the same as skin colour, that's an American thing. Europeans judge people based on what country people are from, not based on their skin colour - we have a long tradition in doing so. =)
My experience has been that european cultures are approximately as racist as the US, they just have different histories and dynamics so it comes out differently. There is a lot less visible reckoning with race as well, which makes it easier to assume or pretend that there are no problems with it.
Also, immigration is way too complicated an issue for you to just flippantly paint opponents of unrestricted immigration as xenophobic. I grew up in Northern VA, which has a large population of Asian (particularly South-Asian) immigrants. Most are highly-educated, highly-skilled, upper middle class, and reliable democratic voters. But god forbid someone's kid comes out as gay or transexual. I'm one of those immigrants and I still have qualms about raising my kid around here, because I think a lot of my neighbors don't share my values.
Discussions of racism/discrimination are different in Europe than USA. Europe doesn't quite classify people by a small amount of 'races' (like white/black/etc.), instead using local ethnicities, which can get much more complex.
I really liked Tin Tin but I cannot pretend like the entire thing isn't incredibly racist. All of the bad guys had a certain skin colour, you could guess who was going to betray the main cast just by their colour/culture, and a lot of other cultures are portrayed like savages (sometimes literally).
http://www.cracked.com/article_19610_the-6-most-secretly-rac...
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