I am really sick of americans coming along and giving their own version of things that have happened in Europe (or literally anywhere else in the world for that matter. I’m talking about Europe because that’s where I’m from so it’s what I know most about) and putting an america-centric spin on things.
Racism really isn’t as black and white (pardon the pun) as you may think it is over there. Speaking from the point of view of someone who is whiter than white and more English than Stonehenge, I realise that I can’t understand exactly what people who are generally discriminated against go through on a day to day basis, but seriously. ‘White people lol’ like yes we can joke about that, yes white people generally have historically ruined most things, but not everywhere is America. I’m also not saying that the UK is such a paragon of virtue - I mean we literally caused America and the BNP and UKIP are things that exist - but at the very least we don’t gloss over things we stuffed up in history books.
I mention all of this because of the recent aeroplane tragedy and that post of screenshots from twitter America-splaining how this is actually a racial issue of white people being treated as just ‘troubled’ whereas if he was Muslim he’d be a terrorist (I think the 9/11 attack is referenced but I can’t remember sorry) and while yes I can’t say for certain that that is not a possibility, I can argue that it is absolute crap. They had all the evidence pointing to him being depressed (and also as a result of this we’re getting better security, psychological testing, mental health is becoming a more open discussion, it’s all good) and they would not ignore that. They are not American police, getting paid under the table by old white people who have nothing better to worry about than keeping the status quo to shoot anyone who isn’t white passing. I have more faith in the French authorities than that. It would be nice to get some compassion for these people instead of criticism and cynicism based in something internalised and otherwise groundless.
Side note: also under this banner of ‘Things Most Commonly America-splained’ is capitalism (note: American capitalism is different to pretty much everywhere else). And communism as a reaction. Like sometimes I don’t think either of those things mean what you think they mean. Another thing is ‘POC’ - I often see this being used as a term for literally anyone who is not white American (or sometimes we’re put in there too as white English/Welsh/Scottish/N.Irish but I mean England’s the only country in the UK right what are those other three like who’s even heard of Scotland am I right). No, that is not how it works. It’s a lot more complicated in places that aren’t America (those exist!).