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chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you’ll post something casual like “anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic” and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like “funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA……… no of COURSE we dont watch ‘the grunch’ or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype”
themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:
riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students
raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman
vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it’s different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.
monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.
Germany literally has a children’s game called “Who’s Afraid of the Black Man”
I don’t wanna hear about Racism being a “uniquely American problem”
Cause it very clearly is not.
School shootings and medical debt however ARE “uniquely American problems”
I learned pretty recently that the “black man” is actually supposed to either be the plague/death or some kind of boogeyman.
Here in Finland, it used to be “kuka pelkää mustaa miestä” which means the same thing, but was later switched to “kuka pelkää mustekalaa” (mustekala=octopus/squid) because, well, that name didn’t work too well when kids started to actually see black men.
That being said, racism seems to be one of the most popular pastimes in Europe.
It’s seen as an American problem because America is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. It’s not surprising you don’t hear about racism much in countries with 80%+ white populations
Looking back as an adult the origin is clearly racist. But since I sung that in kindergarden myself: We didn’t associate “black man” with a person of colour. When I was 4, I was imagining some creep in a black trenchcoat.
That’s based on the black death, aka. the plague, hence the rules of the game.
We have enough rascist shit in our culture but this one isn’t :)
I actually didnt knew that.Thanks. :)