So I am an American (culturally and all that). In terms of skin color and facial features, people mix me up for Persian and Middle Eastern A LOT. I am actually Indian.
I have heard that Black people are treated really well in Europe but almost all other minority groups, especially Middle Eastern/Arabic people are treated extremely terrible.
One day I do want to travel to Europe (along with Latin America as well) but when I interact with people there I want to know how big of an impact my ethnic appearance will have when it comes to things such as meeting people and interacting with them and all that jack. I want to know what countries to stay out of as well. Would love it if I had the chance to talk to some Europeans about this matter but it seems pretty hard to find them online. I have also heard that women there hate Middle Eastern looking men and just talking to one can land me a sexual harassment lawsuit.
I am a young kid, still in college, and I want to get an idea of how race relations are in Europe because they might end up impacting me. Any idea on how I can find the relevant information I need?
Europeans will look at the way you dress, speak, and act and identify you as an American before they look at your skin tone and make guesses based on that. In other words, while there are certainly sometimes issues with race relations with people from the Turkey-to-Bangladesh parts of Asia in the UK, Benelux, and Germany, I don’t think those issues will affect you at all.
My personal experience is too limited by geography and class to make any useful statements, but for at least parts of the UK it’s nearly a non-issue, certainly far behind longstanding local tensions between groups you would see as racially the same (i.e. white).
Edited to add: if you can give a better idea of where you’re interested in, you might get a clearer answer. I think the answers vary pretty widely across the continent.
As generalizations, both those statements are false. There is certainly racism in Europe, but the degree of it, and which particular races (if any) are disliked, varies hugely from place to place (remember, Europe is much more diverse, culturally and indeed racially than the U.S.) and from individual to individual. Some people are certainly prejudiced against blacks, and some against middle easterners, but most people are not.
In Britain, in particular, as a person of Indian extraction (unless you mean Native American), you will hardly be noticed. There are LOTS of people of Indian (and Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc) extraction in Britain, and although some whites are prejudiced against them, for the most part they are thoroughly assimilated and accepted in to British society.
In general, I do not think you are likely to encounter any more racial prejudice in Europe than you would in America, and very likely less, and such prejudice as there is is usually directed at immigrants rather than visitors or tourists. As Dr Drake implied, you may well be more likely to encounter people prejudiced against you because you are an American, but that is extremely unlikely to cause you any actual problems or humiliations. The worst it is likely to bring you is having to suffer a harangue from someone about the iniquities of G.W. Bush and U.S. foreign policy.
Where on the continent? For people from the subcontinent it’s more common in the UK than in other countries, simply because people from the subcontinent are more common in the UK than in other countries. In Spain we’re starting to get couples with one Palestinian and one European all over the country because we’re starting to get Palestinians (and other people we call moros, think “northern Africa to Arabia”) all over the country; until the last decade or so you’d see that kind of mixed couples only in the towns closer to/bordering Morocco (where the moro would usually be Moroccan, for evident reasons).
Reactions to “skin tone” are rarely about it alone. An IT dude from India, a grocery seller from Pakistan and a street vendor from Bangladesh will get different reactions; an ebony-skinned family heading to church in their best clothing will get a different reaction from a black insurance salesman sitting in his office, and a different reaction from a day worker of any color. Country of extraction/linguistic ability will also influence things: does the person speak the local language with a local accent, a native-but-not-local accent, a foreign accent, not at all?
There are racists and xenophobes in any European town, but which way each of them bends is different. Heck, there’s a demonstration being prepared for next Saturday, asking my local President to step down; the slogan on the posters advertising the demonstration is “Barcina go home”. Apparently the people who made the posters don’t so much have a problem with her policies or her being in a two-party government, oh no, what they have a problem with is her being fron another province!
Multicultural diversity, are the fashionable, politically correct words used by the Brit government, to mask border control incompetence. If immigrants adapted to the Brit way of life, the Brits would adopt far more readily. There is an under lying hallicline of waters beneath the ‘stiff upper lip’ surface.
OK, the first thing you need to do is take in the fact that there’s no such place as ‘Europe’. There are dozens of countries, with an incredibly wide variety of languages, cultures, customs, you name it. One of the very few things they all have in common is that just about everyone rolls their eyes at Americans who think we’re one homogeneous mass.
The second thing: when it comes to Ireland, at least, Dr Drake is bang on. People will relate to you first and foremost not as a brown guy, but as an American guy. Come here and yes, we will see you as an outsider, and we’ll assume there will be culture gaps - but based on your accent, not your skin colour. This may be because 99.99% of our immigrants came here within the last fifteen years, so the big differences are about culture of origin, not about colour: I assume I’ll have a lot more in common with one of the (very few) black people who grew up in Ireland than with a white Latvian who got here last month.
Years back I worked with a black American guy, and it was only through him that I got an idea of how important race is in the US. He thought *everything *was about him being black, even though 99% of the time it really, really wasn’t. One day he and I were talking about stuff we’d done as kids, and he mentioned cutting bandaids into shapes and wearing them in summer to get suntan tattoos. I said something like, ‘You guys did that too? I thought it was just our genius idea!’ and he got into kind of a snit and said, ‘Yeah, guess what, surprise, black people tan too!’
Except I lived in Africa as a kid. The kids I was doing bandaid tattoos with were a lot blacker than he was. The difference I was talking about - the primary difference everyone saw in him - was him being American, not him being black. Maybe because there’s such focus on race in the US, or maybe because he assumed that being American is such a default that it could never be seen as ‘foreign’, that didn’t even occur to him.
So my points are:
To us, you’re basically an American first and foremost. That’s your defining cultural quality, the primary one that’s going to define our expectations of you. Not your skin colour.
If you’re hoping that people will be able to see you without enormous sweeping generalisations, you might start by taking on board the idea that Ukraine, Scotland and Greece are not actually the same place.
Take a walk in any medium-sized French town and you’ll see dozen such couples. The opposite (white guy and Arabic girl) is much less frequent but definitely not unheard of.
I am trying to be polite, but seriously Curious Man, you seem obsessed with finding a white girl, any white girl - come hell or high water. This is your third thread on variations of this subject in as many days.
Take a breath. Take a very deep breath.
Go out and meet people - all kinds of people.
You are verging on “stalker” status with blonde, white women.
Seriously, dude. I fully understand raging hormones and all, but there are attractive, wonderful women in all forms - not just some ideal blonde, white woman to fulfill your current, very hyper-active, sexual fixation.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if any blonde, white woman would sense your desperation and borderline obsession and flee from you as soon as you even look in their direction.
You mean, like Zidane and his wife? Yeah man, totally unheard of.
I know both males and females from northern Africa or Palestine who are married to locals in my northern-Spanish home town, and it’s a place where …counts… 30 years ago there was one (1) guy from Morocco. Married to one of those large blondes that were born so Wagner could write operas, by the way.
Very hot internet-famous woman (and who had her unauthorized picture on a good portion of internet ads a few years ago) and her less attractive husband whom I can be jealous of but still root for. (Don’t quibble me that Morocco is not wholly Arab).
In Europe, the countries named by the OP probably are some of the better ones for that reason. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t pockets or isolated incidents of racism, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect on the countries as a whole (and places like Stockholm are not as white as you might think). If the news is to be believed, one of the most xenophobic countries right now is Hungary.
I have grown up around all kinds of women. Personally, I have seen more Black women than White women and I am still attracted to White women more. Love Latinas more than I like White women generally speaking but we don’t have many down south.
What are the qualities that you love in Latinas that you generally don’t find in White women?
What are the qualities you love in White women that you generally don’t find in Black women?
no idea on how to answer that question but it is down to looks alone and nothing else
the idea I do get is that European women are racist to Brown men so even though I am physically attracted to them I find myself not going near them due to that belief