friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Once again, seeing the whole, "Fediverse is full of Europeans who keep refusing to frame social justice issues strictly from the point of view of USians and this is definitely very problematic everyone!" thing.

And I can't help thinking, "Have you tried taking your cultural imperialism and shoving it up your arse? Maybe that will help?"

in reply to Sarah Brown

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

"But why can't you see racial issues through the precise lens of the US civil war and its aftermath and the North American social justice struggles of the 20th century while completely ignoring the impact of your own countries' 19th and 20th century colonial legacies, the status of European ethnic minorities, and the effects of reintegration after the Cold War? The fact that you have your own issues and perspectives is VERY PROBLEMATIC FOR ME, and I DO NOT LIKE IT!"

Diddums?

in reply to Sarah Brown

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

Guess fucking what? The societal norms of the US and refusal to consider that other perspectives may exist are pretty much utterly dominant in the moderation culture of every other English language social networking system.

Maybe it's OK to have, you know, just one where we don't all have to pretend to be you?

in reply to Unaliving Tendencies

mastodon - Link to source

flere-imsaho 🇺🇦

@julieofthespirits @ausir @ailbhe we all are, just the province name changes. and it's not bad! just that we all have something to learn, and means to do it on our own.

(and! the people from europe denying existence of racism in europe or demanding a full explanation of american history every single time there's a conversation going between americans are fucking annoying.)

@Ailbhe @Unaliving Tendencies @Ausir
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Nils H

Exactly this. I remember when iTunes would automatically name your albums when you ripped them all those years ago. I had an album by Talking Heads that was called [IMPORT], which illustrated perfectly how the United States is just the whole world to some people. The second example that sticks with me is seeing Brianna Ghey accused of white privilege in 2023. I love the US but some need to take a step back sometimes.
in reply to Mz. April Daniels

mastodon - Link to source

Tane Piper ⁂

@MzAprilDaniels Maybe is a perspective problem, but Americans tend to take their problem, magnifying it x100 then project it on the rest of the world. When the world doesn't respond in kind (like when America exports democracy and UAVs) people tend to get upset.

This is not a particular issue, but a vast wide range.

@Mz. April Daniels
in reply to FeralRobots

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@FeralRobots To me, this still all feels refreshingly different to the self censorship we have to engage in on other sites to avoid falling foul of very narrowly focused moderation practices, but there are those who are essentially saying, "The culture of this place needs to change because I refuse to consider the cultural sensibilities of other places might result in things being seen though a different lens", and to me, that displays an utter lack of awareness of the way the rest of us have to act pretty much everywhere else.
@FeralRobots
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Mr. Pataphor, Dadaist Dad

@FeralRobots Because of the American education system and Mass Media Industry, the majority of Americans live in a remarkable cultural bubble. The can not even get Canada right, and we are part of North America. 😂

You speak English, but wrong.

How many hours does it take to drive from Toronto to Vancouver?

Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. Is that the metric system?

@FeralRobots
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@Tim @toolbear@ Taylor See, that’s an example right there, “homogeneously white”, where the word “white” means a very specific thing to Americans in this context which you just go and assume has to have exactly the same cultural connotations to the rest of the world.

And then start using that assumption, or even assertion, to eg tell Roma people that they can’t possibly be victims of racism (and they very much are) because the experience of people ten thousand kilometres away is somehow more pertinent to their situation than their own.

It’s kinda like going to another country and remarking that it’s full of foreigners.

reshared this

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@Tim @toolbear@ Taylor I mean, that was your assumption. I’m complaining about a generalised phenomenon however; specifically, how on earth does someone come onto a forum, note very publicly that it’s predominantly populated by non Americans, and in the same breath decide that the best way to navigate this specific dynamic is through the precise prism of USA race relations?

You’re literally doing it now, and it’s apparently so ingrained that you aren’t even aware that you’re doing it now. You’re seeing a room full of mostly Europeans talking to other Europeans and deciding that the most important thing we need to bear in mind is your specific cultural sensitivities.

You don’t appear to give a shit about ours though.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@Iain MacLean I mean, the whole thing about race is that it’s a social construct and the boundaries of what constitutes it are set according to the underlying social structure of each society.

But Americans literally can’t comprehend, despite their last 150 years of history shaping it utterly profoundly, that other places draw lines in different places.

As far as they seem to be concerned, there are “white people” and “PoC”, and that’s it.

The mental gymnastics they then perform to contextualise things like the Northern Ireland situation, racial discrimination against travellers and Roma, the literal Holocaust, and shoehorn them into their specific narrative are something to behold.

in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Jay Blanc

I struggled to understand what you meant by all this. And then I read your further replies on your site where you bring up Roma, and I have this to say.

Please do not use Roma as a way to say "White people suffer racism too!"

Traditionally, Roma were not treated or classified as White People. Some of us can pass as 'White', and many had to in order to flee Fascism. But Roma as a people were not considered 'White People'. See for example how Australia treated Roma immigrants.

in reply to Jay Blanc

mastodon - Link to source

LN

@Jay Blanc
in reply to LN

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@LN :anarchoheart3: @Jay Blanc Ah, but if you don’t export it 1:1 then you’re just saying “you can be racist against white people too”, apparently, because nuance is the enemy when someone has a nice simple binary categorisation system.

Like, growing up a lot of my extended family members were racist as fuck. A lot of it absolutely was about skin colour, but an awful lot wasn’t too, and when someone is desperate to tell you that, “no, your experiences were wrong, because that doesn’t fit how I see the world”, then they can just go away.

@Jay Blanc @LN
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

quixote

mastodon.nz/@goatsarah@thegoat… US cultural blindness is something else again. My family immigrated there, I grew up bilingual, and I've lived in many different countries. The US is the only one I've come across where so many people can't conceive of other ways of thinking about experiences. Literally can't see it at all. Like pointing out something visible in UV and to them it's not there. Nor can they imagine you don't mean this other thing which they do see in shades of green.

Sarah Brown

2023-06-06 18:22:58

friendica - Link to source

Once again, seeing the whole, "Fediverse is full of Europeans who keep refusing to frame social justice issues strictly from the point of view of USians and this is definitely very problematic everyone!" thing.

And I can't help thinking, "Have you tried taking your cultural imperialism and shoving it up your arse? Maybe that will help?"


in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Nemo

Reminds me of this person I knew who claimed Switzerland was racist (it is) because it doesn't account for the legacy of enslaved Blacks.

(dafuk? Yes there were complex slavery links, but it's *nothing* like Southern US! Also, it's got specific idiosyncrasies linked to recent and older migration waves, but that's not really racism and they're the anti-racist because they're saving the right words...)

in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

: j@fabrica:~/src;

@pkboi This is the same for USian native/tribal issues, Hispanic issues too. Eg, the 1619 Project minimizes much older systemic racism that still affects tribal treaties. We ignore the significant differences between Cubans, Mexicans, Guatemalans.
I’m pretty sure most folks here still think Sunni-Shia violence is just because middle easterners Hate Freedom, ignoring centuries of history, Iranian and Pakistan funded militant groups.
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

localzuk

this is exactly the issue I've had for a long time. The arguments for changing how Mastodon works, how it is moderated, etc, are seemingly mostly from Americans that are trying to frame everything from a US perspective. It's infuriating.

There's more Europeans than Americans, surely we can have one place which suits us more than them?

in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

It’s the colonial mindset. I truly believe it is almost impossible for an American to conceive of the world as separate from America. There’s America, there are the friendly Disneyland states you visit to be entertained by the curious displays of the Almost-Americans, and then there are the Brown people ghettos you bomb (with a suitably diverse military, of course)…

As I watched an American tell a Brit once: “Accent? I don’t have an accent… you have an accent!”

in reply to pmroman 🇪🇺

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sarah Brown

@pmroman The first time I went to the US, I experienced massive culture shock. Sharing a language, I expected far more cultural compatibility but what I found just felt so very foreign, far more so than any European country I’ve visited even when I don’t speak a word of the local language.

It was quite the wake-up call.

@pmroman 🇪🇺
in reply to Sarah Brown

qoto - Link to source

Paul Brownjohn

To some extent I have the same issue with Brits who have never seen other cultures except as holiday destinations!

I have lived and worked in France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg and also spent 3 years living in Thailand.

In each of those countries I have learnt of the massive cultural differences that divide us one from another. Some are highly amusing, others deadly serious.

Some of my more narrow minded "stay at home" British friends accuse me of being a turncoat; of abandoning my 'Britishness' for 'Europeanism' and I guess that is true.

However, I am reminded of a friend of mine who is of Vietnamese origin and who was raised in Vietnam; only leaving to move to western Europe when she was about 20. Talking about the end of the Vietnam war, she referred to the defeat of the USA in Vietnam at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army, as "the liberation". I don't think too many Americans would see it that way. What you perceive depends on the point of view from which you perceive it!

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