naliya:

Hi anon.

Okay, when Europeans say that racism works differently in Europe, they aren’t saying that racism against black people, middle eastern people or romani people don’t exist and we are not ignoring those similarities - literally no sane European will ever try to argue that, and I certainly will be the last to do so, I have never done that in any of my posts about this issue, I am never going to start and I follow no Europeans who do.

Where Europeans get frustrated is when you have US bloggers insisting that their definition of racism (which is mostly about colourism and comes from their history) can be applied everywhere the same. When Americans insist that you cannot be racist against white people because racism is power plus prejudice (or whatever have you) and white people are always in power and therefore cannot be discriminated against.. well this is where you lose Europeans. Because “whiteness” in Europe simply does not operate the same way; to put it in simple words, insisting that white people always held power and were never oppressed erases a huge part of European history, erases the sufferings of many people/countries and of course we aren’t okay with that - nobody would.

I have mentioned the Polish being denied the right to exist many times as well as the Greek’s genocide at the hands of the Turks. I could also mention the Albanian massacres, the oppression of the Irish by the British, the prejudices against Slavic people or the many invasion of Finland by Russia, and those are only examples. Racism in Europe simply isn’t only about colour, it’s also about ethnicity (and classism, really), many people who would be seen as simply “white” in the US, would not in Europe and would face and have faced many discriminations for being the “wrong kind of white” so to speak.

No one in Europe will deny that black people.. etc… will face racism here, but we are uncomfortable with the way Americans will keep pushing on us the idea that white people have always held power and that therefore you cannot be prejudiced against them, simply because Europe’s history do not go in that sense and we witness racism between many European ethnicities all the time. We have a problem with Americans trying to push their constructs and definition of what racism is on us - a definition that comes from their particular history of slavery and segregation - and insist that if we disagree then it must be because we’re racist ourselves.

In Europe you can be racist against white people (including non white people against white people btw - looking at Turkey again), and this is where we are frustrated with Americans trying to force their definition of racism as solely being about white people discriminating against non-white, and with the way they are ignoring that power is fluid and will be held by different people depending of where and when you are. Europe’s different history and social background will mean that those issues will have different dynamics attached to them and won’t operate or be dealt with the same and we wish this was acknowledged instead of dismissed just to try to make us fit in their neat little American centred “social justice” bow.