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?"
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Sarah Brown
in reply to 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?
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Sarah Brown
in reply to 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?
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Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Ailbhe • •Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •๐ถMark Nicoll 3.5%๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ๐ฌ๐ง๐ช๐บ๐บ๐ณ
in reply to Ailbhe • • •Ailbhe
in reply to ๐ถMark Nicoll 3.5%๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ๐ฌ๐ง๐ช๐บ๐บ๐ณ • • •Joe Mansfield
in reply to Ailbhe • • •@ailbhe @duckwhistle Bloody hell, youโre right. I never noticed that on my very shiny new passport.
The 27th amendment really is a shocking stain on modern Ireland.
Ailbhe
in reply to Joe Mansfield • • •Sturm und Drag
in reply to Ailbhe • • •Ausir
in reply to Sturm und Drag • • •Sturm und Drag
in reply to Ausir • • •Ausir
in reply to Sturm und Drag • • •flere-imsaho
in reply to Sturm und Drag • • •@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.)
Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs
in reply to Sturm und Drag • • •Nils H
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Mz. April Daniels
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Mz. April Daniels • •@Mz. April Daniels I would say more exasperated than upset.
After all, this is pretty much the one form of social networking where, if someone desperately needs to fuck the fuck off, youโre not necessarily risking a ban for saying so.
Mz. April Daniels
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Mz. April Daniels • •Mz. April Daniels
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Mz. April Daniels • •@Mz. April Daniels See the sign that says โfree seppo tutoringโ?
No?
Me neither.
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Jacob Christian Munch-Andersen
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Hypolite Petovan
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Hypolite Petovan • •like this
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Sietske Boer-van Vugt
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Tane Piper โ
in reply to Mz. April Daniels • • •@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.
sll - Macron destitution.
in reply to Mz. April Daniels • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •This is a subtoot about Kissane's subtoot about a white guy mansplaining racism to a Black woman pointing out (correctly) how white and off putting the Fediverse currently is?
The criticism about my country's cultural hegemony is valid. But it feels like you're saying the EU's hands are clean on the racism and white supremacy front, which I'm sure isn't what you mean.
EDIT: fix typo
Sarah Brown
in reply to toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz • •toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Because I wrote "But ____" when I usually try to avoid that because of how it can negate the prior statementโฆ
Re-emphasizing that "fediverse feels homogenously white" and "USA cultural imperialism go fuck yourself" are both valid.
I said my thing. I'll move along.
Sarah Brown
in reply to toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz • •@Tim @toolbear@ Taylor See, thatโs an example right there, โhomogeneously whiteโ, where the word โwhiteโ 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 canโt 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.
Itโs kinda like going to another country and remarking that itโs full of foreigners.
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toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Hard disagree. White supremacy isn't an exclusive export from my country.
You keep decentering a complaint from a Black woman. That's what I most disliked and why I spoke up originally.
Sarah Brown
in reply to toolbear#๐ชง votes Harris-Walz • •@Tim @toolbear@ Taylor I mean, that was your assumption. Iโm complaining about a generalised phenomenon however; specifically, how on earth does someone come onto a forum, note very publicly that itโs 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?
Youโre literally doing it now, and itโs apparently so ingrained that you arenโt even aware that youโre doing it now. Youโre 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 donโt appear to give a shit about ours though.
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Exec
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •There's even a sub for this phenomenon called /r/usdefaultism
Dale Ross
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •(((o))) Acoustic Mirror
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
dada
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Till likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to dada • •dada
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Portugal ๐
Same here trying to learn the Perfidious Albion english than US english. It's a mess! ๐
Flore
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
fsan
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •They like to talk about cultures and respecting differences but they will then translate 1-1 United States based societal expectations of how things should work!!
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Sapere Aude
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sapere Aude
in reply to Sapere Aude • • •Die Tatsache, dass Sie Ihre eigenen Probleme und Perspektiven haben, ist fรผr mich SEHR PROBLEMATISCH, und das gefรคllt mir nicht!"
Diddums?
FeralRobots
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •_
*I limit it like that because I think there are just a lot more North Americans on here now.
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Sarah Brown
in reply to FeralRobots • •Mr. Pataphor, Dadaist Dad
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@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. ๐
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?
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Sin Vega
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
mmu_man
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to mmu_man • •Lazarou Monkey Terror ๐๐๐
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •That whole "if we didn't invent it, it must be sus" thing.
Iain MacLean (he/him)
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Iain MacLean (he/him) • •@Iain MacLean I mean, the whole thing about race is that itโs a social construct and the boundaries of what constitutes it are set according to the underlying social structure of each society.
But Americans literally canโt 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 โwhite peopleโ and โPoCโ, and thatโs 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.
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: j@fabrica:~/src; :t_blink:
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Iโm 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.
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JamesK
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Jay Blanc
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •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.
Jay Blanc
in reply to Jay Blanc • • •LN :anarchoheart3:
in reply to Jay Blanc • • •@jay While I agree with her take somewhat, I also think this is extremely easy to miss for us Europeans. Yes, the boundaries of whiteness are not identical in Europe (e.g. the ironic "discrimination" against Italians is funny to Americans but less funny in places like Germany where they are seen as non-white) but that doesn't mean the mode of discrimination doesn't exist here. Our understanding of whiteness is more balkanized but it's still there and at the core of this oppression and anti-Blackness is widespread even if there may be fewer Black people around.
Heck, despite the racism against Eastern Europeans it's trivial to see the difference in how e.g. Germany treats white Ukrainian refugees compared to how it treats brown refugees. There was literally a public discourse around how the existing shelters were undignified and inadequate for Ukrainians when they were apparently perfectly sufficient for Syrians and North Africans.
Yes, whiteness is a social construct but it's also define
... show more@jay While I agree with her take somewhat, I also think this is extremely easy to miss for us Europeans. Yes, the boundaries of whiteness are not identical in Europe (e.g. the ironic "discrimination" against Italians is funny to Americans but less funny in places like Germany where they are seen as non-white) but that doesn't mean the mode of discrimination doesn't exist here. Our understanding of whiteness is more balkanized but it's still there and at the core of this oppression and anti-Blackness is widespread even if there may be fewer Black people around.
Heck, despite the racism against Eastern Europeans it's trivial to see the difference in how e.g. Germany treats white Ukrainian refugees compared to how it treats brown refugees. There was literally a public discourse around how the existing shelters were undignified and inadequate for Ukrainians when they were apparently perfectly sufficient for Syrians and North Africans.
Yes, whiteness is a social construct but it's also defined by exclusion. It's not literally about skin color, it just often aligns with it. But as the recent cases of Latino/Hispanic white supremacist violence in the US have shown, this complexity is not unique to the US.
As for Europe's history of colonialism: just because we were so racist we didn't want to bring most of the slaves to Europe that doesn't mean we heavily promoted slavery and benefitted from it. Just look at Belgian rubber plantations to see how much pain this caused.
You can't export social justice discourse 1 to 1 from the US to Europe but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply. It's not an exact match but it doesn't require many adjustments. We're just leagues behind when it comes to reflecting on our history of these issues. That's not something to be proud of and it's not the fault of the US.
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Sarah Brown
in reply to LN :anarchoheart3: • •@LN :anarchoheart3: @Jay Blanc Ah, but if you donโt export it 1:1 then youโre just saying โyou can be racist against white people tooโ, 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 wasnโt too, and when someone is desperate to tell you that, โno, your experiences were wrong, because that doesnโt fit how I see the worldโ, then they can just go away.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Jay Blanc • •@Jay Blanc Youโre very good at reading what you want and ignoring the rest to in order to be another tedious wanker half way round the world telling us that we donโt understand our own social dynamics and modern history, arenโt you?
*plonk* for you. Toodles.
Jay Blanc
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •quixote
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •mastodon.nz/@goatsarah@thegoatโฆ 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
Nemo
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •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...)
(((o))) Acoustic Mirror
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •localzuk
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •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?
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@NV Ozmus @Mz. April Daniels Itโs an interesting take, John, but letโs check the ratios.
Yeah, I think plenty of people seem to empathise with this, actually. Maybe youโre just a fish not noticing they youโre wet?
Aral Balkan
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Itโs the colonial mindset. I truly believe it is almost impossible for an American to conceive of the world as separate from America. Thereโs 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)โฆ
As I watched an American tell a Brit once: โAccent? I donโt have an accentโฆ you have an accent!โ
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Niclas Hedhman
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@aral
From Snatch; "You people spawned this language. How come none of you can speak it?" (from memory, so could be off a bit)
@goatsarah
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Till
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •pmroman ๐ช๐บ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to pmroman ๐ช๐บ • •@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 Iโve visited even when I donโt speak a word of the local language.
It was quite the wake-up call.
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pmroman ๐ช๐บ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •jorny
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Paul Brownjohn
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •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!
Sapere Aude
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Wieder einmal sehe ich die ganze "Fediverse ist voll von Europรคern, die sich weigern, Fragen der sozialen Gerechtigkeit strikt aus der Sicht der US-Amerikaner zu betrachten, und das ist definitiv sehr problematisch fรผr alle!" Sache.
Und ich kann nicht anders, als zu denken: "Habt ihr versucht, euch euren Kulturimperialismus in den Arsch zu schieben? Vielleicht hilft das ja?"
Ben Dover
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •