It's a difference that comes through quite strongly in European writings on race, where race tends to take a subsidiary position to issues like class or national identity.
I humbly suggest that that's because many Europeans are so pre-occupied with how much better they are than Americans that they're not paying attention to what's going on right under their noses. Sure, there are class and within-Europe national identity issues, but they pale in comparison to the discrimination faced by people of actual other races in Europe; notably the Turks (who can live in Germany for three generations and still not be considered German), but equally Asians, and let's not get started on how Africans get treated. In eastern Europe, anti-semitism is still alive and well. The Romani are still not exactly accepted.
And as for the countries with actual indigenous non-European racial minorities (Sami in Norway/Sweden/Finland and Greenlanders in Denmark are the cases I'm familiar with), I'm afraid the story is far, far too familiar, considering how much the Scandinavians like to think of themselves as enlightened social progressives.
My father always likes to say that Danes are the most fabulously tolerant and non-racist people in the world, just as long as all those other people stay in their home continents, and don't move in next door.
Re: Ah, Europe, such a quaint little village
I humbly suggest that that's because many Europeans are so pre-occupied with how much better they are than Americans that they're not paying attention to what's going on right under their noses. Sure, there are class and within-Europe national identity issues, but they pale in comparison to the discrimination faced by people of actual other races in Europe; notably the Turks (who can live in Germany for three generations and still not be considered German), but equally Asians, and let's not get started on how Africans get treated. In eastern Europe, anti-semitism is still alive and well. The Romani are still not exactly accepted.
And as for the countries with actual indigenous non-European racial minorities (Sami in Norway/Sweden/Finland and Greenlanders in Denmark are the cases I'm familiar with), I'm afraid the story is far, far too familiar, considering how much the Scandinavians like to think of themselves as enlightened social progressives.
My father always likes to say that Danes are the most fabulously tolerant and non-racist people in the world, just as long as all those other people stay in their home continents, and don't move in next door.