I'm Canadian and have known some very racist Canadians. In fact, the most racist man I ever knew was a Canadian. Far as I can tell, racism is everywhere and always an ignorant thing.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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As an American that moved to Canada it was eye opening that a lot of racist Canadians direct the energy Americans point at black folks toward Native Americans. Canada absolutely has a problem with some deep seated racism.
Since you believe this stems from your personal perceptions and observations, the answer likely involves a paradigm shift that random people on the internet can't realistically assist with beyond basic advice. Whenever I'm stuck on a problem and I don't know where to go, a good place to start is collect more data and widen your research. Good luck o7.
It's not American thing - it's a human thing. We tend to group people into us and them.
But also, stereotypes don't come from thin air. There's usually atleast a hint of truth to them. However, where people go wrong with this is when they apply it to individuals. It doesn't work that way. These are group differences. When speaking of individuals there's a greater differences to be found within a group than between them.
US compartmentalizes based on race. It's apparent in essentially all of the media they export to the rest of the world.
Historically American society operated based on a race based caste system and the consequences of that echo into the present day.
And they do it even if there’s not much difference between people. When I lived in Scranton I’d get asked what ethnic group I was a part of - Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, Welsh, etc.
To someone who didn’t grow up there I didn’t know what they were asking, but there was still in the early 00s different parts of town for different communities.
This all stopped when a significant Hispanic population moved in, and they stopped being Poles or Estonians and became “American” and the newcomers weren’t.
Its interesting. Both things you might do you don't think about and things folks do that might be neat and emulated or just seems goofy to you. I love the heat table thing from japan but I had to know about it as a thing (in this case a japanese thing) before doing it. I always sorta wish we had a more bow society than handshake touchy one.
You can't understand this? You just did it yourself...
Most self-aware European
Edit: Well shit
Yeah really… because cultural divides and prejudice are a uniquely American thing! /s
Yes, text book case of how transparent projection is to us when we do it.
lol!
It ain't just race. Pop into one of the nuerodivergent (sp?) Subs on like reddit. So many posts like "I do X. Is it because I am Y". And "why do we all do Y". And "I hate that NT people do Z"...
America is a nation of immigrants and mixed cultures. In the early 1900s, there was great pressure to acculturate to the "American" way of doing things. Immigrants changed their names, clothes, foods, and language to match the "mainstream." There was a push to build a "colorblind" society.
By the 1960s-70s, younger people began to realize that "acculturation" really meant erasing cultural heritage and acquiescing to white, Anglo, male-dominated culture. So there was a movement to preserve, celebrate, and empower differences between people.
This gave rise to the Black Power movement, creation of the term "Hispanic" and the Latin American ethnicity, Women's Lib, Gay Pride, and even the rise of pizza delivery chains (which was regarded as a somewhat exotic ethnic food at the time).
That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.
That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.
This is the crux. It's a uniquely American take on how you deal with a country that has seen dozens of waves of immigration (starting with the illegal immigration of colonization) from many different places over a fairly short timeframe. American culture is kind of like a fork, with a unified base that has integrated but very distinct tines (bear with me... combining the "melting pot" and "salad bowl" tropes is HARD!). At their best, memes and jokes like that can be an invitation to genuine dialogue. At their worst... well... not that. A lot depends on who is putting them out and with what agenda in mind.
Statistically, most European countries seem to be estimated at somewhere between 80%-90% "white," likely to mean "of exclusively European extraction beyond any sort of family memory," and I wager the vast majority of those people are from the core borders or frontiers that might well have shifted in the last few centuries. America hasn't had that sort of percentage for over 40 years, and even then the white population was more "assorted crackers." Even back into that era, most areas will have had at least two and likely three to five statistically significant populations that would have been visually and culturally distinct (not that this in ANY way implies that these groups were treated equally by the power structures... OMG far, far, FAR from it). These people don't have to give up their distinctiveness to remain American, and when considered in good faith, particularly by those who mostly live in the base of the fork, the sorts of things you're describing can be more celebratory than divisive.
I'm not going to suggest Americans are particularly good at multiculturalism (another understatement), but we've been at it a long time and specific practices and trends have grown up around it. The balancing act of racial and ethnic awareness without descending into judgment is probably one of the more complicated aspects of navigating American culture, regardless of whether you were born to it or looking on from the outside. So much so, in fact, that certain small-minded people think we should just snap the tines off the fork and pretend the nub was always a spoon.
The melting pot idea was all over news and media back in late 70s and 80s. Gen X has forgotten what it was like when America was great and not this demon filled hellhole that was elected.
America wasn't great, it was just a lot cheaper to live in.
The economy tanked when Nixon kept paying for the Vietnam War by printing money without raising taxes. That and the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 crashed the American Dream. Jimmy Carter hired Paul Volker to fix things. Jimmy got kicked out before the plan started kicking in and Reagan got the credit. Then Ronnie turned the money spigot on extra high for the rich and that's how it all went to hell.
I lived through it. I would much rather that era than the antiChrist led one of today.
Remember the Hard Hat Riot of 1970?
That's another piece of history we'll soon relive.
A mix of cognitive bias and systemic racism
But also stereotypes exists and can be true to some degree, often just cultural
It's a culture that heavily pushes self identity. Then you combine that with poor schooling and a sheltered upbringing.
If you're of limited education, means, and exposure, when it comes time to start outfitting that identity it becomes very easy to place yourself in a box. And that box becomes the lens you see the world through.
in some people it is a racism thing, but generally it's just a generalisation done either to ask a genuine question about a group or to facilitate a joke. while they may not always be true, these generalisations often are genuinely a thing that a group tends to do more than other groups.
Most Americans do not live in or near a big city. We tend to live in small towns that have a majority of only one or two ethnic groups. My town has whites and latinos but very few black people. I personally know only two black people and neither one lives near me. The only Chinese people I know are the ones who operate the Chinese restaurant in town. My experience is not unique.
80% of Americans live in urban areas
This is based on the census bureau definition, which is much more inclusive than just large cities. 84/510 urban areas have a population greater than 500k. 198/510 have sub 100k population.
What the census means by "Urban area" generally boils down to is "the majority of the labor in this area working in a place with more than 50k population". That is a better metric than "what's the population of this city/ town/ community" since you can have small towns inside urban areas that are going to feel dramatically different than a small town with no direct connection to a nearby population center, but the small town in podunk Nebraska would have far more in common with a small town in podunk Arkansas than a nearby suburb.
Similar small town experience here.
I grew up learning that racism is bad, and that everyone's the same and I truly believed in that idea. I thought I was very not racist, but when I had a job that moved me to a few big cities for a few years, I realized that I had a different kind of racism.
It's easy for all these small town white people to "never do anything racist" because they rarely encounter different people. When they do, they feel like they can pat themselves on the back, because they didn't shout slurs at those people. But, I guarantee that when any one of them travels to the city and sees a group of black people standing outside of a gas station, they'll keep driving until they find a "less shady neighborhood".
These people don't "feel" racist, and they don't want to be racist, but they consistently reinforce racist laws because they have no understanding of how different cultures are affected by them.
The US is way more racist than you would think. Also extremely uptight. It isn't the greatest place like people would have you believe, that's just hype. Something that America does excel at.
This is relative. The US is more open about it's racism and it being bad. Most countries are super racist, it's just different targets depending on the region.
And yet until a few weks ago America was trying to fix these problems whereas a ton of other nations just pretend they have no racial problems and yet they throw bananas on the pitch when Africans are playing or suddenly rival the Ku Klux Klan for hate when someone brings up the Roma peoples.
Who is telling you it's the greatest place? I would say anyone doing that would come off like an idiot for a variety of reasons
I think a lot of it comes from American media which is widely consumed not just here but across the world.
Tons of people around the world have a false view of the US as some sort of utopia. Maybe that is declining in recent years but it’s still a major perception, otherwise people would not spend so much time, energy and money trying to immigrate here.
anyone doing that would come off like an idiot for a variety of reasons
That probably covers at least half the population of the US.
Absolutely not but cool go ahead and tell us how we're all stupid
At least half does not mean all of us.
I get so sick of people getting defensive over things that may not apply to them.
There are a LOT of stupid Americans. There are a LOT of racist Americans. There are a LOT of sexist Americans. There's are a LOT of anti-LGBTQ Americans.
I'm an American and I don't identify as any of the above, but I'm not so insecure to lash out at people who point out what is obviously true.
If most Americans actually WERE smarter than people think we are, we'd be in a different political position right now.
Americans are generally shitty, and those that aren't need to work twice as hard to change that. Denying it just lets it continue.
I'm more than fucking sick of generalizations. You're preaching to the fucking choir here with your apologia for it so it's fucking useless
Sorry. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
No, you meant to shove the blame for the existence of idiotic americans onto those who find your rhetoric to be garbagey bullshit
Such aggression. Do you need a hug or someone to talk to?
what a cool totally not snide but productive human
Thanks. I appreciate that. If you work hard and believe in yourself, you can achieve as much as me.
Our brains are masterful at categorizing information and externalizing information for efficiency (i.e. wow your car smells like my babysitter’s car from when I was 4—that's weird, she drove us to the beach and we rode in rowboats in the pond and fed ducks that day).
If you want actual scientific discourse on this, I implore you to look into social psychology, which presents this in a brilliant little pipeline.
Stereotypes emerge from a "kernel of truth"—which may be false, socially constructed, or only true in a narrow context. When generalized, they become prejudice (pre-judging), which leads to discrimination. When embedded in systems, this discrimination reinforces racism, sexism, and other structural inequalities.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Importantly, this is not just a U.S. issue—it’s a human issue. Our brains naturally categorize to conserve cognitive resources, making this tendency easy to exploit without proper education. And it is exploited—everywhere. From the gendered pricing of products like women’s razors to the way news stories frame subjects based on race or class, these biases shape perception and reinforce systemic inequalities across societies.
Active Divide and Rule.
Last thing the government need is people using social media to realise we have more in common than differences, which social media naturally does.
So it’s managed.
Some people do think that way and we generally use the word ‘stupid’ to describe their behavior.
Some people act that way but don’t really believe it because for some reason it has become cool to be ’edgy’.
!askusa@discuss.online
You're referring to jokes that were commonplace until like 15 years ago. I'm not sure where you're seeing that constantly but I almost never do.
This is such a white person post, man