You all need to just start making English an official language across the EU. Yeah I know that’s very American imperialist of me to say, but most of you speak it already anyway and it would make travel and communication so much easier. It feels like you all are insisting on speaking different languages just to pretend you have unique cultures when let’s be real, once you welcome McDonalds that ship has sailed.
European car manufacturers largely suck ass, I’d rather buy a Hyundai or a damn Nissan than some French or German piece of crap.
As someone who isn’t a European, most of these comments are yanks being loudly wrong about something and the saying “see the europeans weren’t ready to hear it” when someone points out how stupid the thing they said was.
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Some of the takes are okay, to be fair they’re not from Europe
Most Europeans still have a casual sense of arrogance and superiority over the rest of the world. It’s not very heavy, but it’s there, even among some of the best people I know
Europe is not as different from the US as it likes to pretend, especially politically.
Racism is not a unique or exceptionally American phenomenon, and the things I’ve heard from otherwise progressive Europeans can fucking curdle milk equal or in excess to what people in my ultra-rural ultra-conservative home region of the US can say.
Definitely agree on the “Europe is just racist in a different way.” Outside of the obvious ones (like Middle East & Africa), I’d also add racism/xenophobia against “Eastern” Europe (like Poland), which might surprise Americans because they’re still white.
Just ask a Mexican person what it’s like to travel to Spain
Ask a Spanish or Portuguese person what it’s like to travel to France or Belgium. Italians used to face racism in other European countries a few generations ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Dogs_or_Italians_Allowed
I have been surprised by how racist many Brits are
sexist too.
And even then the European countries that feel they’re ahead of the rest tackling racism it’s usually only the urban university educated talking with their fingers in their ears ignoring the majority of the rest of their country.
The things I’ve heard far too many Europeans of various nationalities say about MENA, Desi, Turkish, and Romani folk just… makes my skin crawl.
America has a deep racism problem, and it is both right and necessary to acknowledge it. But those who pretend that Europe doesn’t have a deep racism problem are either not paying attention or in denial - especially considering recent political developments.
The things I’ve heard far too many Europeans of various nationalities say about MENA, Desi, Turkish, and Romani folk just… makes my skin crawl.
Very true
I’ve had good friends who were Europeans studying here, and they can definitely be very insensitive and racist. What makes the two flavors of racism different to me is American racism is typically very confrontational, tribalistic. White man calling a black man a slur, and there’s something cavalier about it, maybe even humorous on the part of the racist.
Europeans have a much more “it is the way it is” attitude. I’ve heard friends talk very disparagingly about interracial couples, or blacks in general, and the attitude is less “hate for hate’s sake” but instead “it is the wrong way to be and my way is correct”. Fascinatingly, when you point out the bigotry, my friends have typically refused to accept their bias (at best), and will deny they’re racist.
Making sure I’m reading this right…I know a guy who claims he isn’t sexist but that it is OK to pay women less because they aren’t as good at some things as men. So in his mind, it isn’t sexist to pay women less or even claim they should be paid less - even though it is.
Is that similar to what you’re saying?
Did you type ‘females’ instead of ‘women’ for the sake of the argument or did you get caught up in it as well?
Guess I got caught in it. Just looked it up and didn’t realize until now that female wasn’t an acceptable word to use. TIL. Thanks!
The easy way to understand and remember is that “female” is an adjective the vast majority of the time, and it’s usually misogynists and incels using it as a noun.
I think mysoginists just have a lot of spotlight on them, or are vocal. I hadn’t been aware of “female” being used as a slur before it was pointed out here on Lemmy. I think “female” as a noun is still used neutrally far more often than as a slur.
As an adult female human, I have never been called a “female” in a positive or neutral tone. The key point is that you basically never hear people calling men “males” anywhere outside of scientific discussion.
Not a bad way of comparing it tbh
Wow, you’ve really succinctly put it best! Being a European myself, this is how I constantly feel when I hear racist shit in my daily life (mainly from family).
It’s like, people here just can’t even fathom that what they’re saying is racist, that they’re racist, because to them what they’re saying is just a simple fact of life that everybody accepts. They don’t show open animosity towards minorities or throw racial slurs like you’d see more in America (though there is definitely some of that here too don’t get me wrong), but it’s a very casual, low-key form of racism where folks comment on X group of people all being one way and no one batting an eye for example.
And if you so much as suggest they’re racist, or the country they’re in has or had issues with racism and other issues of oppression, a lot will legit fight you tooth and nail over it because they can’t handle the notion of it.
It’s really freaking weird and took me a lot of time to be conscious of it myself, since I grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude.
And it’s not just right-leaning people doing this. Some minorities like the Romani are openly discriminated by just about everyone across the political spectrum, the degree just varies. And then based on the country you’ll typically see a lot of Xenophobia towards the bigger migrant groups.
blacks
While we’re on the topic, I think “black people” is the preferred term (in general it’s adjectives over nouns, like “gay people” vs “gays”)
I’ve heard people of all types use the word ‘blacks’ I think it’s a regional thing.
It’s more likely a field thing. People who work in fields highly dedicated to equity (esp. those working in healthcare) are especially concerned with their language and so create style guides that people outside those fields have gleaned from.
Example:
Hey fair enough. I use whites so I tend to use the same kind of term in the other direction, too. I don’t mean anything insulting by it
I’ve heard Europeans call Turks ‘filthy’ and ‘roaches’ and Africans ‘monkeys’. And don’t get me started on the things said about the Romani.
I don’t think there’s a difference in how tribalistic or vicious it is.
Weird. I haven’t.
It really does feel like online communities get more relentlessly xenophobic when they have more Europeans. It just seems like a lot of you can’t get by without mentioning where someone’s from. Like, no, someone not seeing the value in retro computing doesn’t say anything about “the intelligence of the average Scot.” And if you can’t tell where they’re from, American by default.
Not Eurpoe specifically but I shared a rather basic comment on YouTube joking about Great Britain causing famines in India but its okay because they brought trains and the result is a mile long thread of pissed off UK suckers telling me I’m wrong, that there was no fammine, the Wikipedia article and its 300 sources are fake, and that the British empire totally went around modernizing civilization for the benefit of humanity. (Was a post about Irish complaining about a very crappy Irish History book made by a British author)
So I guess for any of those people, no GB was just a colonist empire racing to exploit the hell out of resources faster than France, Spain, and Portugal. The technology they brought was used almost exclusively in their conquest operations (Trains used to transport goods and resources) and they actively supported and supplied opposition groups to destabilize and overthrow governments similar to what the USA does today.
I mean seriously, they held immense power over China via opium and are responsible for practically every shill state in the middle east because they provided weapons to overthrow the Ottaman empire.
The iconic pan arab flag is actually a British designed flag given to all the opposition groups they funded to break up Ottaman power.
They fell apart after exhausting their power in WWII and the USA came in to save them so now they gleefully cheer about how they carried in WWII with intelligence services as if Germany couldn’t have easily invaded the entire nation overnight had Hitler not been an incompetent moron.
Thankfully, after exploiting half the world, they totally didn’t spend the last of their power screwing over every former colony into some long term problem that they could exploit without the need for military power.
Commas are for separating thousands, periods are decimal points. Stop trying to be unique, you’re not.
yall need to get off the high horse and take a joke sometimes. you terrorized the entire world via colonization for hundreds of years through modern day, if people harmlessly stereotype the german or french, make fun of british people, or tease the dutch language, yall can handle it
for context, im american. we get bullied all the time, and while not all americans are fat and stupid, the combination of that many are and that we’ve terrorized the world plenty make me think a lil teasing is fair
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Yes it’s perfectly fair and most of us don’t mind.
I think the issue, especially on Reddit, was the over-representation of US Americans compared to the other countries.
It gets old quite fast to get called a “surrender monkey” or a Nazi on a regular basis in a space where most of the audience is on the other side and I’m not even French or German.
On Lemmy it’s probably a bit more balanced.
I guess let’s see what happens with the Germany elections in February because that nazi line may start to ring true.
Just opened a thread on !europe@feddit.org about that, the polls look okay. The non far-right parties should be able to create a coalition.
Does the Trump election gives everyone the right to call all US citizens convicted felons?
Certainly gives everyone the right to call us a country of idiots.
Sounds derogatory and xenophobic
It is not derogatory if it is true.
You guys elected a felon.
Europe as a whole is swinging too far too the right. Y’all all are descending back into Fascism. The recent popularity of the AfD in Germany being a prime example. My own parents - who immigrated from Germany - are deeply disappointed in the direction the country is taking.
That Europe is not ready for many future challenges.
Not sure if we’re not ready to hear this. The whole world is not ready for many future challenges.
For example?
Refugee crisises far larger than the ones that have been tearing you apart for the last 15 years
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Not the cheese!
Ok, I’ll stock up on it.
Extraterrestrial warfare!
According to movies the aliens always attack the US anyway so I don’t see a problem.
And the quantum flux plague of 2036
The inability to function under duress would be one
European racism is out of control to the point of cringe. The new world cannot hold a candle to you.
Here is a quick example. Netflix released a Norwegian movie called “Christmas as Usual” (translated). It essentially takes the concept of the American 1967 film “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”, moves it to Norway and gives it a holiday twist. According to Netflix, this 2023 film was in the Top 10 in thirty countries. How? How is a movie concept from America’s peak civil rights battles era working for you in 2023?
My wife is European and my largest clients are European with European staff and the abundance of casual racism is hard for myself and my staff to handle. Don’t get me started on my family in-law.
EDIT: Europeans were definitely not ready to hear this one. LOL
What does the movie have to do with anything? Your in-law?
Wikipedia describes the origin different, so maybe the parallels were not intended:
The film is based on the true story of Holmsen’s sister, a Norwegian, and her relationship with an Indian, whom she brings home for Christmas Eve. The film was released to negative reviews.
You misunderstand. I don’t mean that it was a remake, just that it was the same concept. I think the term is “trope”.
The fact that the Norwegian film is based on a true story just makes it all so much worse.
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I think you are missing the context of the film I used as an example. All the friction and the “comedy” in the film comes from the racism. From the start, it is the point. The taxi driver picks them up from the airport and asks the main character if he is from India. When he replies yes and asks if the driver if he’s ever been there, his reply is no but he stopped in Turkey once. The when they arrive the soon to be mother-in-law assumes that the Indian boyfriend is the Taxi driver and the driver is the boyfriend. We are five minutes into the film at this point and it goes downhill from there.
That is just one easy to digest example using media. Our real life daily interactions with the staff from our European clients is a never ending source for more.
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Agreed. We have been sold xenophobia by our politicians and media for longer than America has existed.
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The scary part is that this racism is very alive in German politics right now
European racism is out of control to the point of cringe.
Oh damn it’s all the way to cringe? Now that’s serious lol
Rapidly approaching can’t even status
EDIT: Europeans were definitely not ready to hear this one. LOL
Nah, your example is just shit and that the new world cannot hold a candle to us is fucking insane, y’all just re-elected Trump ffs. We definitely have a racism problem in European countries as well but our Trumpian party in Germany is currently polling at 19%, which is awful enough but to claim that it’s that much better in the US is fucking nuts. I’m in a multiracial marriage myself and while my wife experiences racism in Germany, it’s to a somewhat similar extent to the US
Hopefully someday we’ll learn to be more like USA police and judicial system.
Your point really doesn’t land. Netflix released a movie? Okay… And?
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The film was one of the few of the time to depict an interracial marriage in a positive light, as interracial marriage historically had been illegal in many states of the United States. It was still illegal in 17 states, until June 12, 1967, six months before the film was released, and scenes were filmed just before anti-miscegenation laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.
Makes more sense with this context.
I still don’t get it. Why is a movie’s success with an anti-racist trope an indicator of racism?
Because it should be a non-issue and not an impactful or driving feature of the film.
That feature of the film moved the status quo in 1967. It seemed like that was the point.
If a film were released in America today that pushed interracial marriage as an issue, most would find it racist because it is not a large issue in the greater culture (for the most part).
But I thought the movie only has a similar plot to this 1967 movie, which only featured interracial marriage in a positive light. Does it actually focus on interracial marriage? Because so far nobody has mentioned anything objectable.
Based on the comments it looks like Europeans weren’t ready to hear some of these things. 😉 Let me pile on…
Innovation in Europe is stiffled due to a risk-averse culture, complex regulatory environments, fragmented markets across different countries, limited access to venture capital, and a tendency for established companies to be less receptive to new ideas from startups, making it harder for innovative companies to scale up (compared to the US).
Yea my healthcare one quickly got down voted. Someone used GPT to try to disprove it. I’m even a big propilonent of public healthcare, but you can’t assume it is perfect.
Start-ups in the US benefit from an immediate market of 400 million people. The EU should be able to enjoy a similar benefit but you are right about the red tape. Obviously Brexit in the UK was a total anathema to that as well.
Ain’t no way you gonna put all of Europe into that statement. You do understand that each country have their own system, policies and regulatory laws?
The problem here is that what you’re saying is maybe true for a handful of countries while completely false and inaccurate for a handful of others.
We’re not one single entity. Your statement is just not accurate as a whole.
regulatory environments
Regulations are written in the blood of the victims.
Some are, sure. I think most on Lemmy support those kinds. While I enjoy the effects, USB-C mandates aren’t written in blood, and I suspect the majority of regulations are of that variety.
The USB-C mandate is a direct result of it being actively ignored by Apple. The way to universal chargers, first through micro USB and then USB C was also championed by the EU but only as a loose industry agreement or so. Definitely not enough to reign in Apple which is why it was now made mandatory.
The main motivation was to reduce electronic waste due to every device having a different charger and often not even standardising in the same company.
I support the mandate. Just pointing out that the whole “blood of victims” thing, while true of some very important regulations, is nonsense for most of them. There were no victims of lightning ports. There was no blood involved in generic Champagne being called Sparkling Wine.
And other regulations are written by the lobbyists of big companies.
Here in Germany we have so many regulations that don’t help anyone, except big companies who can circumvent or deal with them.
I don’t want to reduce environmental or worker protection, but we need to simplify a lot of regulations so that the time to do the paperwork is reduced, one of the solutions should be good digitalisation.
From what J can see innovation is happening just fine
Tell me one big innovation of the last 30 years where Europe is leading
na-euv
Doesn’t really count if you have to google it first to know what it is, that’s not what will save the European economy in the future. In the mean time other regions of the world dominate battery technology, battery-electric vehicles, handheld devices, social media, semiconductor technology, quantum computing, and basically the whole internet
Doesn’t really count if you have to google it first to know what it is
Are you saying that semiconductors and chipset manufacturing is not a critical domain today?
battery technology
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umicore
social media
Ironic as you are using a Lemmy instance based in Austria
A few other companies in the fields you mentioned:
- Spotify
- SAP
- Volkswagen
- BMW
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-most-valuable-european-tech-221145055.html
Yes, and as we all know, feddit.org absolutely dominates the social media market.
I specifically wrote that in these areas other regions of the world are dominating. I’m well aware that there are some players from the EU in these areas. That’s not the point. Europe is not leading in any major development of the last 30 years while in other areas they lose market share to the competition like automotive or space (with the notable exception of aviation).
Let’s look at tech companies. Look at that list and tell me with a straight face that Europe is playing a dominant role:
https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/
Out of the 100 biggest companies, there are only 10 from the whole continent.
ASML is such an undisputed leader in today’s chip ecosystem that it’s hard to believe the company’s market dominance really only dates back to 2017, when its EUV machine, after 17 years of development, upended the conventional process for making chips.
It’s also a testament to ASML’s dominance that it is for the most part no longer allowed to sell its most advanced systems to customers in China. Though ASML still does business in China, in 2019, following pressure from the Trump administration, the Dutch government began imposing restrictions on ASML’s exports of EUV machines to China. Those rules were tightened further just last year and now also impose limits on some of the company’s deep-ultraviolet (DUV) machines, which are used to make less highly advanced chips than EUV systems.
Yet although today everyone is banking on ASML to keep pushing the industry forward, there is speculation that a competitor could emerge from China. Van den Brink was dismissive of this possibility, citing the gap in even last-generation lithography.
“SMEE are making DUV machines, or at least claim they can,” he told MIT Technology Review, referring to a company that makes the predecessor to EUV lithography technology, and pointed out that ASML still has the dominant market share. The political pressures could mean more progress for China. But getting to the level of complexity involved in ASML’s suite of machines, with low, high, and hyper NA is another matter, he says: “I feel quite comfortable that this will be a long time before they can copy that.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/01/1090393/how-asml-took-over-the-chipmaking-chessboard/
Doesn’t really count if you have to google it first to know what it is
Maybe you have to Google it
You keep using your phone, and ignoring what tech allows all modern computers to exist. Tech isn’t a major industry, right?
And Europe is not dominating that industry
Just the foundation it’s build upon
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Rather have stifled innovation than innovation running rampant like what the US is doing.
With stifled innovation you only get through if you have an actual good idea instead of just an idea that makes money.
at least the fragmented markets, limited venture capital and closed-mindedness of established compagnies are relatively well known and recognised, wouldn’t say Europeans aren’t ready to hear it
I was actually thinking the first two were the more detrimental, and are the reason behind lack of VC and closed minded companies. The fragmented markets is irritating, but overcomeable.
yeah I think I’d agree with that, hut I’m risk-averse myself so can’t go pointing blame at others
The opposite could maybe be said of the US: due to our crazy-pants lack of financial security, people are willing to do risky things, which, when successful, can drive innovation. I grew up in this culture, so it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, but understand it isn’t for everyone.
The Euro is just financial imperialism, whereby powerful Eurozone countries get to control the economies of weaker members.
And yet those weaker countries (a) want to get into the EU and (b) don’t want to leave it. Absolutely nobody is forced to be controlled by France and Germany.
The Euro also brought some positive benefits for its citizens, no longer having to pay bank charges all the time for conversions between francs, lira, marks and so on. Which arguable was the original point, rather than some kind of imperialism.
US doller?
