this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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(Disclaimer: So first I wanted to emphasize and acknowledge that this can be a sensitive and emotional topic. This question is solely because I'm curious and am trying to understand it from an educational/sociological perspective. I know that a lot of people online can have a short temper but this is not a bait, I just genuinely wanna understand. I hope I will find a few more intellectual people here who won't get offended and can give a more empirical answer. And please apologize if my English is not perfect, English is not my native language and I'm just 21.)

So as a German I'm very close and familiar with the horrible actions that humanity committed in the past. I'd say compared to America who enslaved people based on their skin color Germany was way worse by mass executing and enslaving people based on their ethnicity/religion.

But there is one big difference that I don't understand: Here in Germany we are extensively educated about what happened in the 3rd Reich. It's a big part about our education to learn and understand what horrible things happened and why they happened to make sure this never happens again. This kinda lead to the point where many Germans are deeply ashamed just for being a German (even though they're quite far detached from what happened) and this is also a reason why you won't find many German flags hanging here.

So I'm not much aware about Americas education on their slavery but I experienced extensive racism and misunderstanding from Americans about race to the point where many (of course not all but many) Americans make a big deal out of race as if it defines their core personality and seem to overly obsess to the point where it seems people get different opportunities and are still to this day getting treated unfairly based on their skin. Even though every educated person knows that skin color is not changing someone's personality since we're biologically all the same race called homo sapiens sapiens and what people call "race" is not scientifically accurate but rather a social construct. This seems to go further where people still use racial slurs that have been used for slaves (like the so called n-word) and people overly focusing on skin color like saying they don't wanna be friends with white/black people or don't wanna date them. And it almost seems like it's getting worse in a way and was somewhat better maybe around the 80's.

As a German this feels very weird and wrong to many of us (I talked to many Germans about this who feel similar including Germans who lived in America for a while). Because the equivalence would be if we still continued to make a big thing out of whether someone is a Jude or not which we don't. Whether someone is a Jew or how black or white someone is, really isn't a thing at all here. Of course I'm totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany (but also in the US and every part of the world) but the general way of thinking about "race" in everyday life seems to be very different.

Because to me this stereotype that people solely have low cognitive abilities based on their skin color is very outdated. We all have different skin, there are no lines, humans are colorful and not "black or white". I wonder if there have been strong efforts of American politics and society to get rid of these stereotypes and gain equality for everyone. Because I wonder what the reasons are why this seems like not being the case (at least to the extent it should be) and it seems unnecessarily divisive. Since to me educating about these stereotypes and not putting people into boxes is the key for getting rid of it when there is a mass willingness of people wanting to see each as people and not just as a color and finally put this behind. Might there maybe be industrial or political interests in keeping this divisiveness?

Like I said I'm very open minded and am trying to understand. Please have understandment for my perspective and try to be thoughtful in your answer.

In the end of the day I would just wish for whole humanity that we could put those toxic and destructive actions to the past and start embrace loving everyone for who they are as an individual.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Sorry, how is this a science related question?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are you from a major metropolitan area or rural? I ask because a lot of this tends to fester in rural areas and the us has a lot of them. Its not all of it as you also get people pretty quickly blaming when their lives are not great. White people black people, black blaming white people, and citizens blaiming immegrants. Add in that the us wealth disparity is way high. Like it was in the gilded age. We are sitting at a 40 on the index while germany is a 30. Even worse we had a supreme court ruling called citizens united which effectively said money is speech and allows for unlimited money in our politics. Between rich folk wanting to push division among the poor and some foreign influences that really don't care as long as there is division and chaos as maximally as possible. Add in social media and its ability to link up people who locally would be pretty much alone in their views into a nice little confimation communities. Whelp at that point we have what we have today. Its gotten to the point actually were I can't tell how much are assholes are influencing abroad and how much abroad assholes are influencing ours. Alls I do know is the real issue is money and how unbalanced ownership of it is now. the highest is in billions so nine zeroes. So if you don't have at least 5 zeroes you should certainly should know where you stand and because of how massive the increase each zero is. 6 or 7 are still way down closer to the only zero end than the top.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm from a rural area and mainly lived in different small towns and villages but also lived in a big city here in Germany. It almost feels to me that divisiveness is less in rural areas here since diversity is generally lower and the few people who "look different" or migrated need to fit in more and kind of just grow into the community and are seen like everyone else (but this might just be my area) (I think communities in Germany are more centralized than decentralized like in America). Even though I've seen more open mindedness in cities, I've also seen more separation and inequality there.

I think like you mentioned wealth disparity is probably a big factor and I get that this is more extreme in America (especially if you have this turbo capitalism) and they need someone to stick it to.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago

Germany is a top supporter of the genocide in Gaza. What do you mean "we are taught about the Third Reich and never again"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I’m totally aware that there are still many racist people and even neo Nazis in Germany

This is what you need to focus on

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Of course it's important to focus on that but I think they are very few (I don't know one personally). In every day life we don't make a thing about where someone is from and we take many refugees.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I think you need to inform yourself of your own country. The AfD is on 19% and already the 2nd largest party. They are a racist party and full of Putinites too. You have such a massive problem with racism in Germany, that it is astounding to see you here asking your protectors - the Americans - why they have racism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Have you read "Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten" by Alice Hasters?


Please. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" cannot be applied to racism as a whole, neither did it happen in the way that would justify a national mythos (vgl "Gegenwartsbewältigung" by Max Czollek). Please don't point fingers as a European. And German.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No I haven't but I can give it a try even though "weiße Menschen" already sounds quite stereotypical as the titel

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

I don't really know what to write here without becoming uncivil. You're using big words like science, humanity, everyone, whole continents, 'extensive education' - there's power in reflexion when thinking about discrimination (im Deutschen Diskriminierung und_bis Benachteiligung).

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Remember that Amerikkka is not a democracy, or socialist country. We are more of a oligarchy and we are ruled by the corporate elite. The system has propaganda everywhere saying we have power. But when the billionaires don't like something they can just throw money at the government (or however they do it) and it will change, Amerikkka is a capatilism country where we brainwash the people that think to believe that not having basic necessities is good for us and instead of helping each other we should fight each other over the little amount the corporate overlords give us.

There will be people who will respond saying "na huh! Not true". Propaganda in this country is EXTREME and sense all media is owned and operated by the billionaires... It's easy to brainwash the country (hence why TikTok is getting banned. Not owned by Amerikkka elites, and word of things they don't want us to know comes out from it, can't control it so ban it)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago

Anyone got any reports on how tiktok is handling public sentiment on the dead parasite and saint Luigi?

Reddit supression by strong AF and we got fair amount of it on large news and politics subs here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

The difference is that, in World War 2, Germany was reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of its population was killed off because of the direction that its society took. This forced it to take a really long and hard look at itself and figure out what it could do to make sure that this never happened again.

By contrast, the U.S. has never been put in an equivalent position. The bloodiest war in our history was actually the U.S. Civil War in the 1860's over slavery (and some other things, but mostly slavery). Although the anti-slavery North in that war won and was able to successfully end slavery in the entire country, racism itself was a whole separate issue, and (simplifying the history a bit) it continued to exist formally as a less extreme government-backed institution until the mid-20th century. (An example of this were the "separate but equal" schools that segregated black children from white children and were very much not equal.)

Of course, this only changed the law of the land, not hearts and minds. Education is very local, so there is no central authority which makes decisions about these things, and people regardless have the option of sending their children to private (often religious) schools, or even to home-school them. Furthermore, unlike many countries, we take freedom of belief extremely seriously, and additionally we extend this to a near-absolute freedom for parents to teach whatever things they want to their children to believe. The U.S. stance is essentially that we might not like the values that our neighbor is teaching our children, but we like the idea of the government telling us what values we are required to teach to our children even less, and this is essentially because our country was founded on a fundamental distrust of government and this general attitude has propagated down the generations.

So, what would it take for the entire country--and remember that this is a huge and incredibly diverse country--to get together and decide that we really need to, collectively, put aside our own individual opinions of what our values should be and what we should be teaching our children and refashion our entire society around a new collectively held set of values? That is asking a lot of people, so probably the most likely way that would get done is if fascism takes over our country and drives us to start a war that results in the entire country being reduced to rubble and a significant fraction of our population being killed off. This would force us to really take a long and hard look at ourselves and figure out what we could do to make sure that this never happened again.

(Except that now that nuclear weapons exist, "rubble" takes on a new meaning, so that rebuilding part may not get a chance to happen...)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Basically: money 🤑💰. The desire for more of that led to all sorts of bullshit made-up "science" supporting the doing of what the people wanted to do anyway.

Here's a fantastic introduction video from what I consider a great series: https://youtu.be/Ajn9g5Gsv98. In particular it contrasts slavery in North vs. South America, where the latter was so much more violent and bloody and dismembered so many more people that they had to constantly import more bc so exceedingly many died that they could not keep a self sustaining population of them, which somehow still made the northern version all the more evil even while being more "gentle" bc they could therefore breed slaves like cattle.

The dehumanization might have been part of the point, or it may have only been helpful to make the money, but either way, the families of slave owners who did not go out into the fields and therefore were not as closely associated with it - though crucially, still directly benefitted from the work product - went along with it all as collaborators due to the fact that their financial status depended upon them doing exactly that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Very interesting, thanks a lot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

You are welcome! 😁🤗

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