<p>The US is in many ways less racist because it has a longer, more active history of integrating immigrants and part of its identity is built upon being a society of immigrants. Within Europe, countries with a history of immigration (like France or Brittain) tend to have less racist attitudes than those that haven’t (like Poland or Italy.)</p>
<p>Economic growth is also a huge factor. It’s very slow economic growth that is the root of a lot of racism in places like France, as young African immigrants have had problems. </p>
<p>In some ways though, Europe (or many parts of it) is less racist than America because its people are more culturally aware about the rest of the world and have better general education. A big part of racism is ignorance, and there is less of it in Europe. I think that’s the aspect that DSP might be referring to. It’s easier to hail a cab if you’re black in Paris than in NYC.</p>
<p>Just on a side note sakky:
so much efficiency in fact that France has the largest Jewish population in Europe today. Actually France had one of the smallest % of Jewish population exterminated among the countries that were occupied by nazi Germany.</p>
<p>I do not deny that Germans and Eastern European nations like Poland have had historically greater anti-Semitism than France has, and France also a fairly decent job of repairing its relations with the Jews right after the war, when it took more than a decade for Germany to truly come to grips with the Holocaust and many Eastern European nations to this day continue to deny the depths of anti-Semitism. </p>
<p>But the point is, France was a highly industrialized nation that nevertheless went through paroxysms of Fascism and anti-Semitism in the 30’s and 40’s. The US has never had an official government policy of attempting to exterminate all Jews. </p>
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<p>This I don’t agree with. I believe that average educational attainment levels are actually higher in the US than in the majority of Europe. Europe too has its share of highly ignorant people, if the racial soccer incidents demonstrate anything. </p>
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<p>I would actually say that this has to do with crime rather than racism. Studies have shown that even BLACK cab-drivers in NYC prefer not to pick up black passengers. </p>
<p>We can talk about the nazis’ official policy of exterminating Jews 60 years ago, or that of the American governement of exterminating Native Americans which ended ~60 years before that. Late into the 19th century, the California legislature was paying Civil War vets to kill off its Indians.</p>
<p>With regards to Europe being better than France, I should also add that high officials in the Israeli govt, including I believe, Ariel Sharone, have actually specifically called for France’s Jews to leave France. Now while it is Israeli policy to call for all Jews to go to Israel, you dont see high Israeli officials telling American Jews to leave America. So I’m going to have to agree with Sakky on this one.</p>
<p>If France really were an antisemitic country, it wouldn’t have had the largest Jewish community in Europe. The above are more of a consequence of France being against the Iraq war, which the Sharon government was a big proponent of, than anything else:</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that France was more anti-Semitic, historically, than Germany was or Eastern Europe was.</p>
<p>My point is, that French anti-Semitism, while perhaps historically less strong than anti-Semitism throughout Europe, is still probably not AS anti-Semitism than the US was. That’s not to whitewash the US’s history of anti-Semitism. My point is, if Germany and Eastern Europe have been historically some the most anti-Semitic places in the world, and the US has been one of the less anti-Semitic (although still strongly anti-Semitic), then France would probably be in the middle. </p>
<p>Stating that France has the largest Jewish community in Europe is somehow proof that France is somehow not antiSemitic is like saying that some guy is the most racially tolerant of all KKK members in the world. It’s really not saying much. History has shown that you don’t have to really be anti-Semitic to have lots of Jews wanting to live in your country. You just have to be LESS anti-Semitic than everybody else. But that’s not to say that you’re not anti-Semitic at all. It’s like some guy bragging that while he may have murdered people, he’s murdered fewer people than others around him have. True, it’s better to have murdered fewer people, but it’s not exactly a cause for celebration.</p>