this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Europe

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I would say your entire argument is based on an approach where you create a definition of racism that's extremely narrow and then claim it doesn't exist in Europe because it doesn't meet your specific criteria.

Frontex literally pushes people back at sea where they drown, sends people to places where they're tortured and raped, and we collectively allow this to happen. That's institutionalized racism whether you like it or not.

Your claim that "if white people came by sea they'd face the same fate" is a hypothetical that can't be verified - it's a classic counterfactual fallacy. The reality is that we don't see masses of white people drowning in the Mediterranean while the EU turns a blind eye.

You're also trying to define racism only as "racial laws" which is an incredibly narrow definition that no sociologist would accept. Structural racism manifests in policies, practices, and institutions - it doesn't require explicit "whites only" signs to exist.

Regarding Ukrainian refugees versus other refugee groups: initially there was indeed more acceptance based on perceived cultural similarity and yes, race. But as I already mentioned, even Ukrainian refugees are now being scapegoated by politicians in Poland, Hungary and other countries. The pattern is clear - initial acceptance followed by growing hostility.

The European Parliament groupings you mention are irrelevant to my argument. I was clearly talking about national politics where far-right parties have either gained power or significant influence in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, France and Germany among others.

Your attempt to frame this as "open borders extremism" versus "moderate border control" is a classic false dichotomy. There's a massive difference between reasonable border management and letting people drown at sea, which is what Frontex does.

I stand by what I said - Europe has deeply ingrained xenophobia, and Americans coming here will discover that too once the novelty wears off. They'll be blamed for housing problems, job market issues, and changing the culture - just like every other immigrant group before them.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

So if we have no comparison on what would happen with white people coming by sea why would you assume is racism.

I gave the counterexample you conveniently ignored that's black people coming by other means or from other country facing no discrimination or way different integration issues.

The life of a USA black person, a south American Black person and an African Black person is on average completely different in europe. So race is not considered here. It's not a narrow racism definition, it's no racism because race does not have any weight in the equation on how someone is valued or not in europe.

If we where racism we would be doing the same to black americans and we are not. So the issue is different. The reason some people are treated differently is other, not race. That's just evident because plenty of black people face no issues whatsoever. And plenty of black people face way different issues that those faced by africans who come by the Mediterranean.

I live in a place where most black population is not African but American. And they have the same integration issues as white Americans, despite having a completely different skin color. Because those issues have different roots that race.

This is not the USA or other countries where race it's taken into account for how people are treated, and thus we could talk about racism. In USA there's plenty of people now who where alive when racial laws where still in place, way different situation than in Europe, same rethorics could not apply.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You're cherry-picking examples and artificially narrowing this to "Black Americans vs. African migrants" when my original point was about Europe's broader treatment of migrants and refugees from many backgrounds.

Why are we suddenly only discussing Black people? My original comments covered migrants from various regions, including Middle Eastern refugees, Ukrainians, and Southern Europeans. This selective focus is a distraction from the systemic issues I highlighted.

Even if we accept your unsupported claim about differential treatment (which needs actual evidence), it doesn't disprove discrimination - it just shows how xenophobia intersects with class, perceived cultural compatibility, and legal status.

The documented policy failures at Europe's borders affect migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, various African nations, and elsewhere. Focusing on how "Black Americans face no issues" (which is itself questionable) ignores the thousands who drown in the Mediterranean or face abuse in detention centers.

Let's return to the actual evidence: Europe has policies that result in documented human rights abuses at borders. We criminalize rescue operations. We fund dictatorships to stop migrants before they reach us. We've created a system where people die rather than receive help.

These aren't opinions - they're documented facts. Whether you call it racism, xenophobia or "migration management," we've normalized treating certain groups of human beings as disposable.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

But you are saying. Because people who come in handmade boats drown in the sea we are racist. There is no logical correlation between those two issues.

You just want to stamp a negative connotation label on us over that.

The fact that we want to control who enters our countries does not make us racist. That's just a fact, as it does not fit into the definition of racism. Race have nothing to do with it.

Wanting to control immigration is not racism.

Racisms is making policies to harm people of different colour (or race) living in our country. Our politics have nothing to so with race, but with border control. We don't care of the colour of the skin, we just care that they are coming through an unregulated migrational path, that it's actually pretty dangerous to them. We are not even actually trying to kill anybody.

And it's of maximum importance to considere the massive amount of immigrants of all races and colours that come to Europe by different migrational path and face not those issues. So it's EVIDENT that the treatment to those who come on handmade boats are caused by HOW the come, and not by what their colour or race is.

Are people of the exact same race coming by plane sinking in the sea by european policies? No, then race is not the cause.

Also, sorry, but the voices of a few politicians of two countries about Ukrainian refugees does not make EUROPE.

It's also very important to differentiate the concepts of not supporting immigration, or wanting to have control over the borders to the concept of racism. As they have nothing to do with each other, once again racism here is just used as a punitive label, a fallacy of those you like so much, to avoid talking seriously about the pros and cons on different border and immigration policies.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Your argument is a perfect example of how we sanitize our migration policies with euphemisms. "Border control" sounds neutral and reasonable, but what we're really talking about is active policies that regularly result in preventable deaths.

Frontex doesn't just "control borders" - they push migrants back to Libya where they face documented torture and sexual violence. They don't accidentally fail to rescue people - they actively avoid responding to distress calls. These aren't unintended consequences; they're the designed outcome of policies meant to create a "deterrent effect."

Whether it's technically "racism" by your narrow definition is beside the point. The reality is we apply completely different standards to different groups of migrants. When Ukrainians needed refuge, we quickly created special protection status. When Syrian doctors needed refuge, we let their families drown in the Mediterranean. The difference isn't "HOW they come" - it's who they are and where they're from.

Your claim that "we don't care about the color of their skin" is contradicted by statements from European politicians who explicitly advocated for Ukrainian refugees because they were "European" with "blue eyes and blonde hair" (as multiple news anchors and politicians stated in 2022).

And yes, a "few politicians" absolutely represent broader European attitudes when they're leading political parties and setting policy. Friedrich Merz isn't some random person - he's likely to be Germany's next Chancellor. When these politicians face no meaningful backlash for their statements, it reveals societal acceptance.

The problem isn't that we want functioning migration systems. It's that we've created a two-tier system where people from certain regions are forced into deadly routes and then blamed for taking them, while we pretend this isn't connected to who they are.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Every syrian got asylum not just doctors.

I think is a well known fact, given all that has been talked about Syrian refugees

All violent death is preventable, the question is what's the best way to prevent those is, and who is to made responsible. Those torturers you talk about are as human as you and me, thus respinsible for their actions.