This question is meant to be in good faith. I know this topic can be charged but please try to be understanding.
As a 19 year old from Europe I’m just trying to understand why so many Americans (of course not all, but many) not just only seem to have stereotypes against foreigners/immigrants with different nationality such as Mexicans etc. (which is also the case here in Europe), but also exclude and stereotype other Americans solely based on their looks (or what many Americans call “race”).
For example I think many people in Europe unfortunately also are racist against immigrants and people with nationality from a different country because they fear that they’re bringing crime and drastically change the culture (because many of them are Muslims etc. and have very different world views and might not accept ours). In America this seems to be the case as well emphasizing “American values”/“America first” and excluding everything that’s against that and mass deporting immigrants.
But what’s even harder for me to understand is why so many Americans seem to exclude and racially stereotype other Americans solely based on their appearance that has nothing to do with their personality. They could have the exact same personality, interests, religion, same number of American ancestors etc. but still separate and stereotype each other based on their skin or face appearance.
Of course this also exists in Europe but it seems way more rare than in America. In American culture it seems like it has normalized that people constantly talk about skin color (being “black” or “white”) and other “races” that they exclude and stereotype. Like calling people “black people” or “white people” as if they’re a different species.
For example France also has many people with dark skin and other features but they seem to be way more integrated and mixed. If it’s racist they’re mostly related to someones nationality or personality but not whether how dark or pale their skin is or whether they look Asian.
For example I have friends with dark skin but we never talk about that. We might only talk about it the same way we talk about having different hair and eye color but we don’t obsess over it as if we’re different people because of that.
It would seem very weird here if someone said “I don’t date Asians”. Or things like “Black-Only” Schools or communities would be unthinkable here.
The act of calling someone “black” or “white” alone seems weird imo, since skin color isn’t truly “black” or “white” like coal and paper are. Imo it’s more like a brown/orange/pink color that varies in darkness between people but there’s no distinct point where someone is considered dark/black or pale/white anyways.
And to me it always seemed completely normal that all humans naturally look different, some more some less (which I think is a more healthy and realistic view).
I know America has a long racist history but that doesn’t justify this imo and seems weird to still take place in 2025.
The top comment does a good job of explaining the racist history of the U.S., but I think you also need to understand the sheer volume of ink spilled by American academics trying to use science justify why it’s okay to keep black people as slaves. They stopped using religion and cultural issues as the primary justification pretty early on, since those arguments blatantly conflict with our cultural identity. Science was the only thing they could use that didn’t seem at least a little anti-american, so there is hundreds of years of scholarly work claiming that white people are biologically superior to the other races. This is likely the primary reason that USian racism looks so different than in the rest of the world.
Also, a lot of the weirdness at the core of U.S. culture makes more sense when you remember the 13 colonies were founded by an extremist Christan sect (the Puritans) and two megacorporations (the Virginia Company and the Plymouth Company).
Racist country filled with racists.
This really isn’t difficult.
But what’s even harder for me to understand is why so many Americans seem to exclude and racially stereotype other Americans solely based on their appearance that has nothing to do with their personality.
You likely know the USA’s checkered past with human slavery of Africans, so I won’t go into that, but thats great example of what I’ll cover.
Besides the tribes of Native Americans that have been here for millennia, all of us are immigrants or the product of immigrants past. Each subsequent wave of migration has had a semi-dominant culture that then worked to “fuck you, I got mine” to immigrants from later arriving groups. Historically while we absolutely discriminated against people of color, its not just skin color that we did this too. We did this to the Irish. You can see here that by this time German immigrants were acceptable and even preferred at the same time Irish were discriminated against:
source NYT 1854
Then 50 or so years later we did this to Italians, and some of that discrimination came from Irish were faced much of the same hate years earlier.
1903…and on and on.
Its not just race though. Even in USA women didn’t have the right to vote until 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment. Homosexuals couldn’t even marry until 2015.
In short, most of us are dragging the least of us to a position of understanding of equality and equal treatment to all Americans evenly. While I’m very happy about the key pieces of progress we’ve made (Civil Rights act of 1964 being one), We have a long way to go yet. Discrimination in the USA is still a huge problem we need to fix.
Other nations may not discriminant based on race, but on other things.
- UK has a history of discrimination based on societal class
- Canada has a history of discrimination based on preferred language
- India has a history of a caste system
Other countries yet discriminate on religion. Humans have a habit of choosing in-groups and out-groups, and then centralizing power to the in-groups to the detriment of the out-groups.
Europe is racist against the Roma, Australia is racist towards aborigines. I just wanted to note that.
Never heard of Roma. What is that?
Roma
Excuse me, Romani may be more recognizable. Gypsy is a pejorative.
Romanians. Gypsies.
Romanians are not the same as Romani. While there is a large Roma/Romani (and Sinti) population in Romania, it’s not the same thing.
Not to be confused with Romanians or Roman people.
The Romani people[k] (/ˈroʊməni/ ⓘ ROH-mə-nee or /ˈrɒməni/ ROM-ə-nee), also known as the Roma (sg.: Rom), are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group[74][75][76] who traditionally lived a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence reveal that the Romani people originated in South Asia, likely in the regions of present-day Punjab, Rajasthan and Sindh.
Wow this is a very interesting and insightful reply, exactly what I was looking for. I learned a lot from this and have a better understanding now, thank you!
I wanted to add that even though I believe that there’s probably still a lot of the discrimination against our own people in some places of Europe that you mentioned, I have to say that I rarely experience this.
Like the example you gave for the UK, even though I have never lived there for a long period, I’ve been there many times and I’ve never seen anyone mentioning the societal class. Maybe from movies or games that play in the past they say “Look at this poor peasant” but I’ve never experienced this IRL.
I don’t wanna hate on America at all (I think it’s an awesome country in many ways), I think this is just important constructive criticism because I’ve experienced so many times that Americans called people black or white and made a stereotyping/discriminating thing out of it, said the N word etc.
And especially for purely appearance based reasons I think it’s particularly bad because no one can change their body or skin color since that’s how they were born.
But of course we need to get rid of all discrimination including the ones against foreigners that Europe also definitely has!
Like the example you gave for the UK, even though I have never lived there for a long period, I’ve been there many times and I’ve never seen anyone mentioning the societal class.
Perhaps you have experienced it and didn’t realize it. The upper house of Parliament (House of Lords) is unelected by the people of the UK. Many of its members got their seat by hereditary (as in they inherited it from because of their high class lineage) others are high ranking members from the Church of England. These seats are held for life of all members. Replacement members are elected by the existing members. This is an example of class based discrimination.
I don’t wanna hate on America at all (I think it’s an awesome country in many ways), I think this is just important constructive criticism because I’ve experienced so many times that Americans called people black or white and made a stereotyping/discriminating thing out of it, said the N word etc.
I have no problem talking about it. We certainly have a problem with discrimination here. If we can’t talk about it, we can’t improve our situation and oppose this bigotry. Our current president is one of its offenders enabling the racism and discrimination as are the people under him he put in charge.
I think the best example of how deeply ingrained classism is in the UK is the video of now ex-Prime-Minister Rishi Sunak as a young man:
I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class… well, not working class.
I think people often don’t immediately see how stark the class divide is in the UK, especially tourists, because the UK has a relatively large middle class especially around touristy areas. But the difference between Kensington and, say, Middlesbrough is stark
If only we had received a large influx of socialists and anarchists. <sigh>
Because an awful lot of people in the United States are racist, bigoted, queerphobic, xenophobic, or some combination of those. Or worse.
I really don’t know, and I live here. I think it’s just baked into the culture. Like there is too much indulgence in tribalism, it’s not smacked down but wink wink nod nodded.
My kids’ friends are a diverse bunch and don’t seem to judge anybody by their coloring so hopefully it’s easing.
I think in France it’s because they enforce French-ness, right? They make laws against wearing religious dress in school, they push for conformity, they teach kids to be French. It’s almost like a religion. We don’t have the same homogenous culture here, not that it’s any sort of excuse for bigotry.
I think in France it’s because they enforce French-ness, right? They make laws against wearing religious dress in school, they push for conformity, they teach kids to be French. It’s almost like a religion. We don’t have the same homogenous culture here, not that it’s any sort of excuse for bigotry.
We, in the USA, did that here too to children of tribes of Native Americans. source
Canada did the same to the First Nations people. source
It was brutal and cruel to erase the cultures of the many tribes living in both countries. Many children were killed and their bodies buried on site of the schools. Its part our dark history of our two nations.
Well yeah. Obviously as colonized land there was, and probably still is, absolutely sickening brutality, and not as long ago as it would have happened in Europe. I just mean that France is unapologetic about enculturating kids even now, and standardizing, keeping a more stable culture.
We tend in the Americas, not just the US, to be more ever changing in culture, we adopt foreigners and they change us and we like that (or most of us do) and there are more pockets of different cultures.
I’m guessing you’re also @[email protected]. You should really not create a new account every time you post. It’s one thing to move to a new identity every few months or something for privacy reasons, but for every post is a bit much.
Seconded. I tend to shed accounts from time to time, mostly for practical reasons… you will never guess my previous two account names.
Seriously though, posting with a new identity every time is what 4chan does. While it has its use cases, never being able to conjure an opinion on the person you’re talking to over time is tiresome and annoying at best. You can spend am entire year talking to people and at the end of it you haven’t gotten to know anyone even slightly better than before.
Privacy is one thing. But being a perpetual blank slate gives you no advantages.
Yea you’re right, it’s probably unnecessary. So I will keep this account for now
It’s not just racial stereotypes either.
Say you met this guy on the street:
You are going to form opinions.
True, I should’ve probably added that
I’d say that it has been baked into the culture since the US was formed. Remember: Thomas Jefferson was in with the gang that signed the ‘all men are created equal… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ crowd. And yet he owned over 100 slaves.
And Americans are far from being alone at that stereotyping. Take a close look at Britain, for example. In fact, where can you go in the world where you won’t have to prove the stereotypes are wrong about you?
A lot of American culture makes more sense when you remember that we were founded by an extremist Christian sect and two megacorporations. The theocracy and the Neoliberalism was always there, it just was kept out of the constitution by the few atheists among the founding fathers.
i think it’s really dependent on where you are in the USA and then your accent when speaking. That is a stronger determination on how you will be received over skin or racial distinction.
but really a lot of the US is racist in some way. facing it in some way to stand up for yourself as an individual is the best way to beat it.
- some Lakota dude living in rural suburbia USA
Why do so many Europeans stereotype Americans based on country of origin?
/s but only kind of
Because our culture is the European cultures of the immigrants who came here, on steroids.
same number of American ancestors
I believe that the culprit lies there. As the USA are a nation of immigrants they hold similar beliefs about people with different ancestry, who are still american just not of the same skin color/religion/whatever as people around the world hold with strangers from other countries. Also the USA (9833520 km²), a single country, are practically as big as Europe (10186000 km²).
For your europe example, If it’s related solely to someone’s personality then it’s not racism by definition. If it’s claimed that it’s based on personality, but the claim only appears in relation to people who look different in a particular way, then it’s racism masquerading as something else.
Maybe the only real difference you’re seeing is that Europeans are a lot more subtle than Americans (culturally).
They aren’t more subtle, they just don’t think their racism counts, and not just against Romani.
Yea with Europeans I meant that I don’t notice them basing racism on people looking different but more on nationality/when they’re not from Europe.
But with Americans I additionally noticed a lot of racism solely based on people looking different even though they were also American.
Ah yeah. We really need another word for that other-nationality bigotry.
It already exists, it’s variably chauvinism/nationalism/jingoism depending on context.
Can’t be bothered to actually talk to people is my guess.
As opposed to any place in the world that does this?
