As a fellow European (German right here), I think you are right on about the current refugee crisis! And I do think racism is a major issue; as we speak, we are having a major resurgance of open racism, xenophobia and right-wing extremism in Germany, it's honestly terrifying. It's interesting you say Syrians are "white", because in Germany they would never be considered as such. But then again Europe has some major double-standards regarding the right type of "white" anyways.
Yup that’s why I said in another post that race is kind of a fluid concept, because sometimes it really depends on the eye of the beholder. We Maltese people generally consider Syrians to look like us. Maltese people are for the most part caucasian, but we’re not the same type of white you’d find in the north. So since we’re white, and we think Syrians look like us, we consider them white. It’s the same with middle eastern people and some Latinos/Hispanics. That’s why sometimes I feel like the term ‘white’ doesn’t really mean white skin anymore… rather it means ‘privileged’. Because we often look at oppressed groups of people who aren’t considered white in the US or in northern Europe, and upon observing their skin we’re like “But they are white… their skin tone is the same as/similar to ours”. And you’re right, I feel like in Europe the white race itself has sort of divided itself into factions, so there’s white white then there’s olive skin, then tanned and so on and so forth.
Also, yeah I know what you mean about the right-wing extremism thing. In last year’s European Parliament elections alone there was a significant increase in the election of radical right wing parties, and to be honest I think the rise in immigration has something to do with it (I’m writing my uni dissertation on it). Needless to say it doesn’t indicate a good future for refugees since as you said, these radical right wing parties are generally heavily anti-immigration and rely on votes from working class racist people who feel uncomfortable with the inflow of immigrants as they are worried about employment etc. On top of that, they tend to be very Eurosceptic and harbour highly nationalistic sentiments (take UKIP in England or Front National in France), and this seems to be a trend throughout most if not all of Europe lately so that begs the question of whether these MEPs will be willing to cooperate at EU level or whether their sole aim is to just pull their countries out of the EU once and for all.
