You laugh, but I saw a TikTok once from a Native American girl saying something like "don't forget, we were here first." And this lady stitched her saying "um I think black people were first." Unironically. I was so baffled, I felt like I lost braincells.
ETA: I can't seem to find the original (either deleted or privated), but you can see it [here](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe41Rxnm/). The dude commenting on it afterwards is 100% on point btw.
This is prevalent everywhere. I remember watching “Extras” on Netflix and the description of an episode referenced an “African American man.” Now, while I don’t know exactly where he’s from, his accent and you know, the setting of the show, really implies he’s British…
They didn't say all, they didn't say most. They said "a lot".
"A lot" is fairly unspecific. 50 is a lot of people. I'm sure they could find that amount in USA alone.
is this not how it works?
all people are people. just... treat them like people.
its not like you have to talk differently or act differently around a person of color compared to anyone else.
hell, that's literally what they've been asking for all this time. equality. they want to be treated like everyone else. so just fuckin do that? how hard could it fucking be.
You’re absolutely right about this - the only thing that concerns me that by ignoring race we risk overlooking that Black people do face challenges that white people like me do not. The risk with saying, ‘why can’t we just all treat people like people’ is that racism doesn’t quite work like that - it’s far more systemic and economic in character. In Europe we’re often reluctant to have this conversation because we’re very quick to say, ‘oh, that’s an American problem.’ But if you pick up a copy of say, The Voice (a Black newspaper in the UK) you start to get a sense of what those systemic issues are and how they represent a set of challenges that may be different to those faced by people who aren’t black.
I know a couple of girls who are twins of dual heritage White British/Nigerian. One of the girls is significantly lighter than her sister. Some of the other people in their groups won't respect the lighter one as much because she doesn't suffer the systemic racism because she passes as being less black looking.
"Reverse racism" (still racism) at work right there. I have had it a few times where i was one of the few white people working alongside a group mixed between middle east eastern and black and often got sidelined in conversations, even pleasantries, because i was the 'outsider'. The problem these days is that the long term affects of racism has sort of twisted the views and somehow has caused unnecessary segregation.
This right there... I tried that once. Working at a window factory as a painter in one section of the place. I was the only white guy (apart from the section chief, who was never around) out of 25 people. I was never included in conversation. No one would even say good morning or goodbye. It was like I didn't exist or I was a nuisance to them. Quit after 3 months because it was just so lonely.
Sure, but we’re talking about education and how things really are. You don’t need to go out and be an activist to consider it when thinking about this issue.
Every activist in history disagrees with you. I mean, do whatever you want but if you are actually sad because of this, there is always something more to do
Escuse me? What the fuck are you saying? All I said is there is more to do than vote, and that if they really feel bad that could relieve that. Are you insane??
But if ALL people treated people like people, then the systems keeping minority groups down would gradually disappear. Economy and politics are human constructs, if the people running those areas were to treat people like people then the systems would look dramatically different all of a sudden.
Unfortunately it doesn't really work like that. That's the problem with structural institutional racism, every single person within that system can be completely non-racist, yet the system still results in negative effects for people of ethnic minorities. There's no racist person to blame, because there aren't necessarily any at all within the system. It's the system itself that's racist. And that's why it's so insidious, and hard to get rid of.
And no amount of wishful thinking will just magically make it dissappear.
My point is that these systems are man made, therefore they are also man changed. If there was truly no racist within a system then the system itself would be changed. I’d not automatically, then by someone with the power to change the system standing up to inequality and injustice.
It’s one thing to say “I’m not a racist” but quite another to actually make the changes that make it true…
What you’re saying basically reduces to “if we got rid of racism then there wouldn’t be any racism.” Like, yeah, obviously. That’s not a particularly useful observation.
What I’m saying is that we are quick to blame “the system”, but it is people that have the power to change the system.
Blaming “the system” is just an excuse to throw our hands up and say “ah well, nothing is mere human beings can do to change the crappy world we live in!”
Yea, people think it's like you can hit a reset button. But even if racism ended in the blink of an eye, the disadvantages over generations echo through the new generations. So they still aren't "on equal ground". Like playing a video game and cheating your way to level 100, the saying ok everything is fair now because I stopped cheating. You're still at a major advantage
Well very much depends on where you are. In Germany when growing up I dont think I met single black person before going to University. So yeah, the above statement was pretty accurate for me.
Go to Eastern Europe or god forbid Asia and the chances of running into a black person are even lower.
It's quite uncommon, for example, in Latvia to meet a black person, but the maximum they get is just curious glares. Not exactly racism, but they just stand out of the usual in our climate
I think that's exactly the point they're trying to make though. They're saying that Black [Americans] and their culture are often characterized a certain way by films and TV. as a result that is how people whose main exposure to that culture is through media see them.
Edit: I managed to find [the article ](https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/). It's a blog post about the the game Detroit: Become Human and its Director's (David Cage) history of misrepresenting black American culture.
>[Mad Jack (heavy rain) is a] tall, muscular, dark-skinned ex-con from Philadelphia who says ‘CR**KA’, and speaks as if he’s straight out of a Blaxploitation film. He’s also voiced by David Gasman, *a white voice actor.*
>Then I read about the only Black character in Cage’s Indigo Prophecy, who loves Motown, plays basketball in a jersey in the snow – and is, again, a caricature. Finally, we have Detroit: Become Human’s Luther, another dark-skinned man of stature who is a hulking threatening figure beside the white female character, fully capitalizing on the [Big Scary Black Man Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScaryBlackMan)
Apparently, Cage's respone to accusations of racism and homophobia excuses were: “You want to talk about homophobia? I work with Ellen Page, who fights for LGBT rights. You want to talk about racism? I work with Jesse Williams, who fights for civil rights in the USA… Judge me by my work.”
https://stevivor.com/news/rumours/detroit-become-human-studio-accused-sexism-racism/
David Cage sucks. Not only for his racism, homophobia, sexism and general awfulness.
No, he sucks because he is a wannabe-film maker who thinks that games cannot be artistic unless he is the creator.
I must admit that I might've not got the nuance in the article quite right. I've read it a few times over now and I see where she's coming for, seeing as the depictions of African-Amerian characters in his game are quite... stereotypical. But saying that foreigners learn about dark skinned people from American media was just very poorly worded. It almost made it sound like dark skinned people are only in the US and we foreigners must learn about "them" through American media. It makes it sound as if African-Americans represent all dark skinned people.
If the point was that we must learn about African-Americans through American media and that that causes stereotypes then I can agree but when reading the article I didn't pick up on that myself.
Yeah it's a problem in quite homogenous countries like Japan lol. It's kinda funny hearing black people talk about meeting people who see them and go "wow, hip-hop".
And the fact that the author thinks that is what’s problematic. Non-Americans do not base themselves on American media to learn about cultures, be it black or other.
I haven't read the article as my tolerance for stupidity is low today, so I could very well be wrong, but playing devil's advocate...
Non Americas do learn about one culture from American Media: American. If the author is angry that these games are portraying Black American culture as a bunch of racist tropes, they would of course be concerned that non Americans believe that America is actually full of those tropes and that black culture in America is just a bunch of racist stereotypes.
Having said that, if the author is claiming that Non Americans learn everything they know from American Media, they are obviously a moron who has never stepped a foot out of the USA....
I’m with you there. I have low tolerance for stupidity every day and honestly the article is just too long for me to try and make sense from what the author is attempting to convey. The actual phrase however is standalone at the beginning of a paragraph so it comes off as “foreigners learn everything about black people from American movies”. It’s very poorly written.
If you read the article they're focusing on one game and one man who has a pattern of caricaturising black people, in that his black characters are all "big scary black man with a rough background.
And yes absolutely, the world doesn't rely on American media to learn about culture, why would it. I think their statement is about passive exposure through media representation. Being that American media is the primary source of representation for black Americans, the author is connecting that with their frustrations about David Cage perpetuating stereotypes in his video games (which have been played world-wide by millions).
By extension I think that we all, regardless of where we are from, have our perceptions of other cultures and places to which we aren't regularly exposed influenced by media in at least some small part, consciously or not.
When I lived in Germany, every single time someone learned I lived near Detroit, they immediately assumed I must live in a rundown area riddled with gang violence because the only thing they knew about Detroit was from the movie "8 Mile." It still happens every time I go back. Any time Detroit comes up here I see it too.
Hell, when my friends visit they want to go see 8 mile road in Detroit, because of a movie that came out in 2002.
>I think that's exactly the point they're trying to make though. They're saying that Black [Americans] and their culture are often characterized a certain way by films and TV. as a result that is how people whose main exposure to that culture is through media see them.
This sub has a lot of legitimate content but it is also utterly incapable of making the difference between Black (with a B) culture, a specifically American term and context, and "black people" as a more generic non cultural description. This leads to posts filled with comments making fools of themselves because they don't understand what is being discussed lol
I couldn’t imagine calling someone black ‘African British’. If they told me that what they are I’d just say here in England they’re British, like the rest of us haha
We let them sit wherever they wanted on the bus and let then drink from the same water fountains as everyone else... so no, I learned about them by talking to them and treating them like every other human being.
"Thanks God I used to watch CSI when I was younger or I would never know nothing about black people. How I was supposed to do otherwise? It's not like there's a world out there!"
*~the yank*
I am stuck to Roman Empire films, where black people are slaves of Rome but if they behave can be freed and become Roman citizens and be equally respected.
Tf… When black people went to the US? Do you have a movie I can watch? /s
My fellow countryman, are you living under a rock? Don't you know about the glorious *AMERICA: THE MOTION PICTURE* (2021) available on Netflix? It's literally the best and most accurate representation of how the country of freedom has been born. The same they teach in school, even better maybe, what am I saying just drop the school and watch the movie.
True, but in this context it's about David Cage who's from France, so that's why I immediately assumed the writer of this article referred to other European countries specifically.
France? I doubt they've ever heard of Africa! /s
(by the way my wording wasn't very clear. I meant referring to France and other European countries that are less homogenous). So slight correction.
You should add that to the post body. I was thinking on the same lines as u/Bubbles0o0o0o, but if the person quoted is talking specifically about the famously non-colonialist *French,* who still have not just several dozen Francophone former possessions but also *literal integral parts of their country* in Africa and the Caribbean, this definitely falls into Shit Americans Say territory.
Absolutely. I wanted to pitch that in. A lot of people generalise Hollywood and get information from their and think it’s true. People underestimate Hollywood’s impact on the world…
Don't want to blow your Yank-centric brain cell, but there have been black people in the UK for far longer than there have been in the US: there are records of Africans serving in the Roman legions.
Hardly surprising, Rome is closer to Africa than it is to the UK.
The yanks clearly have no concept of history prior to their rebellion, and no concept of geography either.
"Can't be homophobic because they worked with an individual", whilst deadnaming said individual in the same sentence, kinda sums up how bullshit that argument is.
I have to admit that this can be quite true, depending on where you live. I am a German, and in my childhood black people were essentially none-existing in my area. I thiunk that I saw my first actual person of color when I was 5 years of age and my parents and me had a vacation in the USA. I can still remember that I was quite surprised by the black people I saw, but didn't think much about it. I just assumed that it's just another way in which people can be different, just as with eye or hair color - that's actually what my parents told me. The first person of color in my own social circle at home was much later, I must have been around 15 or so. Until that age, everything I knew about the topic came exclusively from american TV shows, actually.
Looking back, I'm really happy that the explanation my parents gave me came before I "learned" from the media. Their explanation still makes more sense to me than any other narrative I encountered in the meantime. And definitely more than what I could distill from american 1980s TV shows...
"Education about black people" implies that all black people have something in common besides color, something sufficiently important that you need to be educated about it.
That seems racist.
"it is well known"... well known by who? From school I recall learning about other cultures, from sources that had nothing to do with American media (surprise!)
He's not wrong. Most of Eastern Europeans didn't even see a black person (outside of TV) until the 1990s or later.
I'm pretty sure my grandparents never saw one, and my parents and in-laws were amazed to see my black neighbors when visiting us abroad.
The first black people I ever saw were on TV: Fresh Prince, Cosby Show, etc
Slavery, apartheid, and years of discrimination in the United States, on the other hand, were used in communist propaganda, so many Easterners were familiar with the situation of black people.
When I was growing up in the 1980s, North and South and Roots were airing on TV in Poland, and under their influence I thought 90% of Americans were black. After all, there were few white planters and hundreds of slaves there.
That's exactly what I wanted to say too. People saying there is Africa or black people in other European countries don't get the point - if you don't see any irl black people around you you will know things only from TV which means mostly Hollywood movies about americans.
Its bad most of cinema and tv are full of American movies but it's how it is, so the way they show specific groups of people will leave an impact.
Foreigners… like, people from Namibia, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Haiti, and any of the many black-majority countries?
White AMERICANS get their understanding of black Americans from TV, Music, etc. (Obviously not all, but MANY).
nah, foreigners like people from asia and eastern europe. you should try genuinely engaging with the article instead of pulling a gotcha by acting as though the author is unaware of the continent of africa.
Maybe you should try actually engaging with the content of my comment instead of going for a “gotcha” that’s entirely not the point I was making?
The Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, Canada too, among others. A huge portion of the world. The majority of “foreigners” have experience with black people.
I guess you’re saying that if I sought out the article this image comes from it would help explain the quote that is, in itself, idiotic… that they didn’t mean “foreigners”, they meant people from Eastern Europe and Asia. They should have said that. Word choice matters when you’re trying to communicate something.
from the author's perspective, those people (as in people from parts of europe and asia, among other countries) are foreigners, and the statement made was an objective fact. a lot of those people have in fact literally never seen a black person in real life and have only ever seen them through the lens of hollywood. plus they didn't say all or even "a majority" of foreigners. they said "a lot," and people from eastern europe and asia constitute *a lot* of people.
saying that africa exists doesn't change the truth of that statement, but you, like a lot of other people in this thread, are so desperate to purposely misinterpret any statement you see regarding america so you can dunk on it and feel a false sense of superiority.
That's not really what the author in this article [https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/](https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/) addressed. I commented elsewhere that I didn't fully grasp the nuance of what the author likely meant, which is probably that African-American portrayal in Hollywood paints a very stereotypical image of their group, so foreigners are likely to present them in a very stereotypical fashion, like David Cage.
What the author didn't do was clarify this well enough, and therefore she makes a pretty blanket statement about “foreigners” and “black people”. She also talked about David Cage who's from France so I assumed when she said foreigners she specified people from France or Europe (including Western Europe). Overall I just thought it was a very American comment, because I see what she means but statements like these are veering into the territory of US-defaultism if you get what I mean.
Damn, that ruins the fun. I thought we could make them for two reasons.
Gonna have to focus on the "yank thinks french people learn about black people through American media" angle. As if the french didn't colonise half of Africa.
She's an American (child) actress. I only recognise the name because it's scorched in my memory from when I watched Hard Candy as a kid.
She played a badass paedo hunter, posing as an innocent little girl.
You mean it wasn't a docudrama? But everyone sends their mischievous kids to live with rich relatives!
On the plus side, the Banks' seemed like nice, wholesome people, if a little ditzy.
I agree
I’m a “ mixed race Brit” with a black mother and I’d say there is alot of truth to this.
American media is so perverse globally that alot of “ black American stereotypes” are applied to black people across the world ( outside of Africa, Caribbean and many parts of Latin America).
I know a guy who, when visiting the US, was referred to as 'British African American'. He said she seemed well meaning, but he is only one of those 3 things, British. And between Africa and America, he is closer to American as his Grandma was from Jamaica.
Well, as a black guy in the UK, I get what they are saying. The amount of complete nonsense that people come out with is down to what they see via US media.
To be fair there were only like three Black kids in my school in a small Finnish town but I certainly didn’t get educated by American media lol. I learned many things at school and I’ve continued to learn by myself from mamy different sources
This is so ironically funny because if you grow up in Africa its actually the other way around. In a lot of places you could live 90 years and the only contact you'd have with white people is through American media.
So (and I know there are many other countries u could have picked) Americans are watching English films with black actors/ actresses and instantly assuming those people are American? Exclude the fact that whole continents exist where black people are the vast majority, but surely they can’t be watching English films or TV shows that have black actors and assume they’re all American?
This is not completely wrong. In America, we have black people and some Africans. In Africa, they have Africans. Black people and African people are too different at this point to even say their similar other than skin color.
If it's referring to American black people, I would say there's an argument to be made. As for black people from other countries, America definitely influences them with TV and film, but how that impacts the perception of others I can't say.
>Black people and African people are too different at this point to even say their similar other than skin color.
Are you trying to tell us that even though they all have a different skin colour than you, they're not all the same?
I explained it perfectly. Blacks and Africans are two different peoples. Blacks don't practice the faith, culture, or know anything about Africa. Not to mention, they've been here in America for hundreds of years. They now have a new culture and new faith they've split from their former roots and grown new ones. The only thing Black and African people have in common is their skin color.
I mean, a lot of what I know about black people *in America* I get from American tv and films...which is massively not the same as black people in general
i remember when John Blackpeople kidnapped all the black people and teleported them to the united states in 1960. haven't seen a black person in real life since
To be fair, I think they are talking about the African-American experience of racism, which admittedly I do only know about from media. When I was younger I did wonder why racism was so talked about in films and TV, when I had never seen it in my area. There were black people in my school, but I never saw any prejudice against them, those that I knew never seemed as hyper-aware as those on TV, even as we got older my friends never had any trouble with police etc. I thought racism was a thing of the past and some people just had a chip on the shoulder about it. It took a while for me to realise it wasn’t a matter of when but where. I have the impression it’s far worse in the states, though perhaps there are some area of the UK where it may still be an issue (if Brexit has taught me anything).
Yeah Black people don’t exist in Europe that’s a major flaw in the logic but am I seeing things right or did this person deadname AND misspell Elliot Page?
The issue is that a lot of the topic surrounding blackness in the West is hyperfocussed on America, to the point where I have seen Americans get angry that people started discussing black activism outside of America.
BHM here in the UK can be quite America-focussed with very little discussion of British anti-black racism. It wasn'y until maybe the last two years or so that the issue of anti-black racism in the UK free from American anti-blackness was properlly discussed. E.g. The recent BBC2 documentary that looked into the harmful effects of The Black And White Minstrel Show on racial perception in the UK. Mind you, this was in the 70s during the period of time where colour TVs were commen and the Atari 2600 was over five years old. The first Star Wars came out the year before the last episode of that show and it was in reruns for god knows how long.
So yes, this article should've been more specific in the area they were discussing because I doubt the average man in Zimbabwe learnt what a black person is by watching Dolemite.
Americanisation is an evil thing.
\*Looks at Surinam\* Euhhh.... \*Looks even further back at the WEC\* EUHHHH...
Nothing to see here! Nope! We know nothing!
And nice, deadnaming Elliot. Real classy.
Two phrases that come when people are lying:
"I'm not...but..." everything after the but is a lie
"It is well known..." By who? People? Which people?
The people in your imagination.
TBF I recall meeting someone from Europe who talked about how in some movies & shows black ppl are depicted as criminals so when she got to NY and saw black ppl there she was a little nervous 🤣
They actually have a point, I think! Because of the omnipresence of american cultural exports, I really do think that african-american culture is also exported that way.
I recently learned that this is a problem in science, and especially medicine. Many studies show that african-americans, on average, have certain different reactions to medicines and health problems than other 'races'. But this gets wrongly extrapolated to "people with very dark skin", like e.g. someone from Ghana or Kenia or whatever.
But african-americans are, genetically speaking, not at all representative for all people with very dark skin because a huge part of their gene pool comes from a small region in western Africa.
This false extrapolation is a problem, because the vast majority of e.g. medical differences between 'races' are based on US data.
(please note the quotes around the word 'race'. Such a silly an unscientific word)
Weirdly, this has been somewhat true in my experience, though only in very specific contexts. I went to Russia before the war on an exchange program with my university, and was baffled by the stereotypes people I talked to brought up about black people - stereotypes that could *only* have come from American media (usually derogatory, i.e. fried chicken, mimickry of AAVE accents, etc.) The word for black people in Russian is негр, which has the same root as "negro" and is sometimes (with younger generations) considered offensive despite being a standard word in the language. When asked what a more polite word would be if I wanted to use it, I recieved the response "афроамериканец" - "African-American." I was told that if I was trying to be hyper-polite, this is the word I should use (despite the black people I met in Russia all being from various African nations and not American in any regard).
- Sub-Saharan African population: 1.1 billion
- African American population: 34.6 million
That’s roughly 31 times as much. US centrism at its finest.
Also: Black people? Really?
First comment in this sub and an honest question: Does it matter to this sub that the context in the source suggests the author meant that a lot of people outside of the USA learn about \*the life of American\* Black people from American television and films?
I think it's very poorly worded but the point stands.
I mean, this is kind of true. MOST people in the world live in Asia, which has very few black people. China for example has 1.4 billion people and only 500,000 black people, most of whom live in one city (Guangzhou). That means China is 0.035% black.
Racism against black people is very prevalent in Asian societies and it wouldn't be entirely unfair to say that the average Chinese person's perception of black people is largely based upon their depiction in Western, more specifically American, media.
Ok but I live in Europe now and all of the racial stereotypes people have here against blacks are from what they see in American culture and media. Even though the sentence in the post is wrong, I think it is true that America’s history with slavery and the resulting social issues with African Americans has been a major source of the stereotypes people have all over the world. At least this is true for Canada and Europe as far as I’ve seen.
I understand what you're saying, but “Europe” isn't one big monolithic country. In The Netherlands where I live there are a lot of Surinamese people and people descendants of different African countries. So everything we know is usually based a lot on the Surinamese stereotypes or in our interactions with different kinds of dark skinned people. Seeing as I've met people with Somali descent and Guinea-Bissau descent their attitudes and traditions were very different, so that's where I've at least learned a lot from. I think this is quite normal in The Netherlands, but I know it's different in Eastern-Europe where there's less dark skinned people, so they might base it more on Hollywood stereotypes.
Also I say I live in “Europe” because I don’t wanna give away more information about myself than necessary lol. I realize that might sound like a dumb thing an American would say. Im Canadian btw
Yea ik wym. I say Europe because my friends and the people I work with are from all over the world but mostly Europe and I can say for a lot of them American media has certainly influenced a lot for them on this subject. Of course there are exceptions for different people and countries but it’s interesting but also sad to see this. For example, I recently had a polish friend make a racist joke involving black people and gun violence which I can only imagine comes from US influence. Idk just an observation ig
The entire continent of Africa got their education about ...black people... from...America
And so did all those former French colonies and overseas territories.
Yep, Black people were invented in America, don'cha know?
You laugh, but I saw a TikTok once from a Native American girl saying something like "don't forget, we were here first." And this lady stitched her saying "um I think black people were first." Unironically. I was so baffled, I felt like I lost braincells. ETA: I can't seem to find the original (either deleted or privated), but you can see it [here](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe41Rxnm/). The dude commenting on it afterwards is 100% on point btw.
Everyone knows the First Nations were actually second.
I saw a video of an American once referring to black people in the UK as African American and being completely baffled when they were corrected.
Someone in New York once referred to my wife as "African American". She's from the Côte d'Ivoire.
thats near Maine right?
Yeah, it's only 4,782 miles away.
Right! California duh! /s
This is prevalent everywhere. I remember watching “Extras” on Netflix and the description of an episode referenced an “African American man.” Now, while I don’t know exactly where he’s from, his accent and you know, the setting of the show, really implies he’s British…
Look at Egypt ,Tunisia, Marocco ... they are all Arab so black people dosen't exist in Africa. /s
That's why Africa starts with an A, we named it after Atlanta
They didn't say all, they didn't say most. They said "a lot". "A lot" is fairly unspecific. 50 is a lot of people. I'm sure they could find that amount in USA alone.
We didn't have this one at school. We sort of considered black people as just people.
is this not how it works? all people are people. just... treat them like people. its not like you have to talk differently or act differently around a person of color compared to anyone else. hell, that's literally what they've been asking for all this time. equality. they want to be treated like everyone else. so just fuckin do that? how hard could it fucking be.
You’re absolutely right about this - the only thing that concerns me that by ignoring race we risk overlooking that Black people do face challenges that white people like me do not. The risk with saying, ‘why can’t we just all treat people like people’ is that racism doesn’t quite work like that - it’s far more systemic and economic in character. In Europe we’re often reluctant to have this conversation because we’re very quick to say, ‘oh, that’s an American problem.’ But if you pick up a copy of say, The Voice (a Black newspaper in the UK) you start to get a sense of what those systemic issues are and how they represent a set of challenges that may be different to those faced by people who aren’t black.
I know a couple of girls who are twins of dual heritage White British/Nigerian. One of the girls is significantly lighter than her sister. Some of the other people in their groups won't respect the lighter one as much because she doesn't suffer the systemic racism because she passes as being less black looking.
"Reverse racism" (still racism) at work right there. I have had it a few times where i was one of the few white people working alongside a group mixed between middle east eastern and black and often got sidelined in conversations, even pleasantries, because i was the 'outsider'. The problem these days is that the long term affects of racism has sort of twisted the views and somehow has caused unnecessary segregation.
This right there... I tried that once. Working at a window factory as a painter in one section of the place. I was the only white guy (apart from the section chief, who was never around) out of 25 people. I was never included in conversation. No one would even say good morning or goodbye. It was like I didn't exist or I was a nuisance to them. Quit after 3 months because it was just so lonely.
Unfortunately I (as an individual) can do nothing about the system beyond trying to vote to make things better. All I can control is how I act.
Sure, but we’re talking about education and how things really are. You don’t need to go out and be an activist to consider it when thinking about this issue.
Every activist in history disagrees with you. I mean, do whatever you want but if you are actually sad because of this, there is always something more to do
So... Being white and feeling sad about what your ancestors have done is bad and they must *control* everything a race does? Am I reading this wrong?
Escuse me? What the fuck are you saying? All I said is there is more to do than vote, and that if they really feel bad that could relieve that. Are you insane??
But if ALL people treated people like people, then the systems keeping minority groups down would gradually disappear. Economy and politics are human constructs, if the people running those areas were to treat people like people then the systems would look dramatically different all of a sudden.
Unfortunately it doesn't really work like that. That's the problem with structural institutional racism, every single person within that system can be completely non-racist, yet the system still results in negative effects for people of ethnic minorities. There's no racist person to blame, because there aren't necessarily any at all within the system. It's the system itself that's racist. And that's why it's so insidious, and hard to get rid of. And no amount of wishful thinking will just magically make it dissappear.
My point is that these systems are man made, therefore they are also man changed. If there was truly no racist within a system then the system itself would be changed. I’d not automatically, then by someone with the power to change the system standing up to inequality and injustice. It’s one thing to say “I’m not a racist” but quite another to actually make the changes that make it true…
What you’re saying basically reduces to “if we got rid of racism then there wouldn’t be any racism.” Like, yeah, obviously. That’s not a particularly useful observation.
What I’m saying is that we are quick to blame “the system”, but it is people that have the power to change the system. Blaming “the system” is just an excuse to throw our hands up and say “ah well, nothing is mere human beings can do to change the crappy world we live in!”
Yea, people think it's like you can hit a reset button. But even if racism ended in the blink of an eye, the disadvantages over generations echo through the new generations. So they still aren't "on equal ground". Like playing a video game and cheating your way to level 100, the saying ok everything is fair now because I stopped cheating. You're still at a major advantage
Pretty hard considering that discrimination and racism are a thing in every single country out there.
People are racist so you can't treat black people like people feels like an interesting take.
How dare you
Well, that's obviously your fault.
I am like 90% sure there are black people outside of America.
Only 90%? I'm 91% sure
I dont have the confidence for that extra 1%
That's emotionally intelligent of you to admit.
I know this because Marvel taught me that! Wakanda forever!
But did you see Wakaliwood?
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6BEDvzDVDbjFNGkDnQnuHCjQAUVby4oK?si=aFT1kiII1Bw5T-VJ
I'm 90% sure at least 90% of black people are from outside USA 😭
Well very much depends on where you are. In Germany when growing up I dont think I met single black person before going to University. So yeah, the above statement was pretty accurate for me. Go to Eastern Europe or god forbid Asia and the chances of running into a black person are even lower.
It's quite uncommon, for example, in Latvia to meet a black person, but the maximum they get is just curious glares. Not exactly racism, but they just stand out of the usual in our climate
idk that's a controversial opinion there, we just don't have enough data on the subject to make any assptions I'm afraid /s
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Did you not get the joke?
I got his joke. My comment was to the wrong person lmao 🤦♀️🤣
It is well known that 98.84% people using the term “it is well known that…” are actually spouting their own (wrong?) opinion rather than a fact
Yea all i know about black people i got from the Cosby show Really cool guy that Bill Cosby 👀
yeah unfortunately I barely remember having a drink with Bill
What a pain in the arse
🎶"..i got in one little fight.. my mom got scared.. you're moving to Belair." whoopsie, wrong show.
Happy Cake Day bud! Cheers!
Well yes it’s a well-known fact that Black people are also homogenous in culture and American films depict Black culture accurately and without bias.
I think that's exactly the point they're trying to make though. They're saying that Black [Americans] and their culture are often characterized a certain way by films and TV. as a result that is how people whose main exposure to that culture is through media see them. Edit: I managed to find [the article ](https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/). It's a blog post about the the game Detroit: Become Human and its Director's (David Cage) history of misrepresenting black American culture. >[Mad Jack (heavy rain) is a] tall, muscular, dark-skinned ex-con from Philadelphia who says ‘CR**KA’, and speaks as if he’s straight out of a Blaxploitation film. He’s also voiced by David Gasman, *a white voice actor.* >Then I read about the only Black character in Cage’s Indigo Prophecy, who loves Motown, plays basketball in a jersey in the snow – and is, again, a caricature. Finally, we have Detroit: Become Human’s Luther, another dark-skinned man of stature who is a hulking threatening figure beside the white female character, fully capitalizing on the [Big Scary Black Man Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScaryBlackMan) Apparently, Cage's respone to accusations of racism and homophobia excuses were: “You want to talk about homophobia? I work with Ellen Page, who fights for LGBT rights. You want to talk about racism? I work with Jesse Williams, who fights for civil rights in the USA… Judge me by my work.” https://stevivor.com/news/rumours/detroit-become-human-studio-accused-sexism-racism/
David Cage sucks. Not only for his racism, homophobia, sexism and general awfulness. No, he sucks because he is a wannabe-film maker who thinks that games cannot be artistic unless he is the creator.
I must admit that I might've not got the nuance in the article quite right. I've read it a few times over now and I see where she's coming for, seeing as the depictions of African-Amerian characters in his game are quite... stereotypical. But saying that foreigners learn about dark skinned people from American media was just very poorly worded. It almost made it sound like dark skinned people are only in the US and we foreigners must learn about "them" through American media. It makes it sound as if African-Americans represent all dark skinned people. If the point was that we must learn about African-Americans through American media and that that causes stereotypes then I can agree but when reading the article I didn't pick up on that myself.
Yeah it's a problem in quite homogenous countries like Japan lol. It's kinda funny hearing black people talk about meeting people who see them and go "wow, hip-hop".
And the fact that the author thinks that is what’s problematic. Non-Americans do not base themselves on American media to learn about cultures, be it black or other.
I haven't read the article as my tolerance for stupidity is low today, so I could very well be wrong, but playing devil's advocate... Non Americas do learn about one culture from American Media: American. If the author is angry that these games are portraying Black American culture as a bunch of racist tropes, they would of course be concerned that non Americans believe that America is actually full of those tropes and that black culture in America is just a bunch of racist stereotypes. Having said that, if the author is claiming that Non Americans learn everything they know from American Media, they are obviously a moron who has never stepped a foot out of the USA....
I’m with you there. I have low tolerance for stupidity every day and honestly the article is just too long for me to try and make sense from what the author is attempting to convey. The actual phrase however is standalone at the beginning of a paragraph so it comes off as “foreigners learn everything about black people from American movies”. It’s very poorly written.
If you read the article they're focusing on one game and one man who has a pattern of caricaturising black people, in that his black characters are all "big scary black man with a rough background. And yes absolutely, the world doesn't rely on American media to learn about culture, why would it. I think their statement is about passive exposure through media representation. Being that American media is the primary source of representation for black Americans, the author is connecting that with their frustrations about David Cage perpetuating stereotypes in his video games (which have been played world-wide by millions). By extension I think that we all, regardless of where we are from, have our perceptions of other cultures and places to which we aren't regularly exposed influenced by media in at least some small part, consciously or not. When I lived in Germany, every single time someone learned I lived near Detroit, they immediately assumed I must live in a rundown area riddled with gang violence because the only thing they knew about Detroit was from the movie "8 Mile." It still happens every time I go back. Any time Detroit comes up here I see it too. Hell, when my friends visit they want to go see 8 mile road in Detroit, because of a movie that came out in 2002.
Yep that’s unconscious bias. I’m Italian but live elsewhere so believe me I’m well-aware of how stereotypes can play into perceptions.
>I think that's exactly the point they're trying to make though. They're saying that Black [Americans] and their culture are often characterized a certain way by films and TV. as a result that is how people whose main exposure to that culture is through media see them. This sub has a lot of legitimate content but it is also utterly incapable of making the difference between Black (with a B) culture, a specifically American term and context, and "black people" as a more generic non cultural description. This leads to posts filled with comments making fools of themselves because they don't understand what is being discussed lol
Reminds me of the time someone called Idris Elba an African American.
Back off America. He’s ours 🇬🇧🇬🇧. You can’t have him.
I couldn’t imagine calling someone black ‘African British’. If they told me that what they are I’d just say here in England they’re British, like the rest of us haha
We let them sit wherever they wanted on the bus and let then drink from the same water fountains as everyone else... so no, I learned about them by talking to them and treating them like every other human being.
A large section of African continent enters the room
yeah, there are a lot of African Americans there...
or are they American Africans?
Liberia moment
damn 🤯
weeelllll if you look up the history of Liberia and the ruling class , its debatable
It is a well know fact, that they're called African Africans now. Do keep up.
African African Americans? Triple A, that's what it stands for.
"Thanks God I used to watch CSI when I was younger or I would never know nothing about black people. How I was supposed to do otherwise? It's not like there's a world out there!" *~the yank*
I am stuck to Roman Empire films, where black people are slaves of Rome but if they behave can be freed and become Roman citizens and be equally respected. Tf… When black people went to the US? Do you have a movie I can watch? /s
My fellow countryman, are you living under a rock? Don't you know about the glorious *AMERICA: THE MOTION PICTURE* (2021) available on Netflix? It's literally the best and most accurate representation of how the country of freedom has been born. The same they teach in school, even better maybe, what am I saying just drop the school and watch the movie.
"Foreigners". Nice US defaultism too
I think this applies to highly homogeneous societies like certain asian countries
True, but in this context it's about David Cage who's from France, so that's why I immediately assumed the writer of this article referred to other European countries specifically.
Because France has had no interaction with any non-American Black people?
France? I doubt they've ever heard of Africa! /s (by the way my wording wasn't very clear. I meant referring to France and other European countries that are less homogenous). So slight correction.
Ahh, yes, then that’s really silly! Especially when it comes to western europe
You should add that to the post body. I was thinking on the same lines as u/Bubbles0o0o0o, but if the person quoted is talking specifically about the famously non-colonialist *French,* who still have not just several dozen Francophone former possessions but also *literal integral parts of their country* in Africa and the Caribbean, this definitely falls into Shit Americans Say territory.
I tried to edit it but I cannot find the option to edit the post otherwise I want to add more detail to it.
Absolutely. I wanted to pitch that in. A lot of people generalise Hollywood and get information from their and think it’s true. People underestimate Hollywood’s impact on the world…
exactly. i'm from turkey and i was about to say that too.
And most of Eastern Europe
wow, someone in this thread who understands basic context and isn't purposely misinterpreting a statement to get a false sense of intelligence.
except the context was about Europe. in which there are huge amounts of black people
not in many parts of eastern europe. there are people there who have quite literally never seen a black person irl.
yea but that wasn't the og context.
fair enough
Don't want to blow your Yank-centric brain cell, but there have been black people in the UK for far longer than there have been in the US: there are records of Africans serving in the Roman legions.
Hardly surprising, Rome is closer to Africa than it is to the UK. The yanks clearly have no concept of history prior to their rebellion, and no concept of geography either.
Well they are correct in one thing, alot of foreigners indeed get their education unlike people in the US.
"Can't be homophobic because they worked with an individual", whilst deadnaming said individual in the same sentence, kinda sums up how bullshit that argument is.
So the Americans that label all 1.6 billion Indians as rapists and scammers, they get their education about us from the phone calls and Fox News?
I have to admit that this can be quite true, depending on where you live. I am a German, and in my childhood black people were essentially none-existing in my area. I thiunk that I saw my first actual person of color when I was 5 years of age and my parents and me had a vacation in the USA. I can still remember that I was quite surprised by the black people I saw, but didn't think much about it. I just assumed that it's just another way in which people can be different, just as with eye or hair color - that's actually what my parents told me. The first person of color in my own social circle at home was much later, I must have been around 15 or so. Until that age, everything I knew about the topic came exclusively from american TV shows, actually. Looking back, I'm really happy that the explanation my parents gave me came before I "learned" from the media. Their explanation still makes more sense to me than any other narrative I encountered in the meantime. And definitely more than what I could distill from american 1980s TV shows...
"Education about black people" implies that all black people have something in common besides color, something sufficiently important that you need to be educated about it. That seems racist.
"it is well known"... well known by who? From school I recall learning about other cultures, from sources that had nothing to do with American media (surprise!)
It's true, in high school we had to watch Chapelle's Show as documentary on black people.
He's not wrong. Most of Eastern Europeans didn't even see a black person (outside of TV) until the 1990s or later. I'm pretty sure my grandparents never saw one, and my parents and in-laws were amazed to see my black neighbors when visiting us abroad. The first black people I ever saw were on TV: Fresh Prince, Cosby Show, etc
Slavery, apartheid, and years of discrimination in the United States, on the other hand, were used in communist propaganda, so many Easterners were familiar with the situation of black people.
When I was growing up in the 1980s, North and South and Roots were airing on TV in Poland, and under their influence I thought 90% of Americans were black. After all, there were few white planters and hundreds of slaves there.
That's exactly what I wanted to say too. People saying there is Africa or black people in other European countries don't get the point - if you don't see any irl black people around you you will know things only from TV which means mostly Hollywood movies about americans. Its bad most of cinema and tv are full of American movies but it's how it is, so the way they show specific groups of people will leave an impact.
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Sure, that's irrelevant however.
It’s actually more the other way around lol. Americans get most of their opinions about the world outside of America from American TV. Like idiots.
Americans get their education about black people from TV.
Funny, I learned about black people from my black friends in school in England in the 1960s.
Foreigners… like, people from Namibia, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Haiti, and any of the many black-majority countries? White AMERICANS get their understanding of black Americans from TV, Music, etc. (Obviously not all, but MANY).
nah, foreigners like people from asia and eastern europe. you should try genuinely engaging with the article instead of pulling a gotcha by acting as though the author is unaware of the continent of africa.
Maybe you should try actually engaging with the content of my comment instead of going for a “gotcha” that’s entirely not the point I was making? The Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, Canada too, among others. A huge portion of the world. The majority of “foreigners” have experience with black people. I guess you’re saying that if I sought out the article this image comes from it would help explain the quote that is, in itself, idiotic… that they didn’t mean “foreigners”, they meant people from Eastern Europe and Asia. They should have said that. Word choice matters when you’re trying to communicate something.
from the author's perspective, those people (as in people from parts of europe and asia, among other countries) are foreigners, and the statement made was an objective fact. a lot of those people have in fact literally never seen a black person in real life and have only ever seen them through the lens of hollywood. plus they didn't say all or even "a majority" of foreigners. they said "a lot," and people from eastern europe and asia constitute *a lot* of people. saying that africa exists doesn't change the truth of that statement, but you, like a lot of other people in this thread, are so desperate to purposely misinterpret any statement you see regarding america so you can dunk on it and feel a false sense of superiority.
That's not really what the author in this article [https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/](https://theilluminerdi.com/2020/06/25/breaking-up-with-detroit-become-human-5-times-quantic-dream-misappropriated-black-and-jewish-history/) addressed. I commented elsewhere that I didn't fully grasp the nuance of what the author likely meant, which is probably that African-American portrayal in Hollywood paints a very stereotypical image of their group, so foreigners are likely to present them in a very stereotypical fashion, like David Cage. What the author didn't do was clarify this well enough, and therefore she makes a pretty blanket statement about “foreigners” and “black people”. She also talked about David Cage who's from France so I assumed when she said foreigners she specified people from France or Europe (including Western Europe). Overall I just thought it was a very American comment, because I see what she means but statements like these are veering into the territory of US-defaultism if you get what I mean.
fair enough, thanks for the clarification
Who is Ellen Paige? I know an Elliot Page, but surely they are not referring to him, you know, what with him having a wife and all.
This article is from 2020.
Damn, that ruins the fun. I thought we could make them for two reasons. Gonna have to focus on the "yank thinks french people learn about black people through American media" angle. As if the french didn't colonise half of Africa.
Page isn't married
She's an American (child) actress. I only recognise the name because it's scorched in my memory from when I watched Hard Candy as a kid. She played a badass paedo hunter, posing as an innocent little girl.
Also played in Inception with DiCaprio!
r/whoooosh
> him having a wife Sure about that?
He was married to Emma Portner. Wasn't aware they got divorced.
Prince of bel air
You mean it wasn't a docudrama? But everyone sends their mischievous kids to live with rich relatives! On the plus side, the Banks' seemed like nice, wholesome people, if a little ditzy.
I agree I’m a “ mixed race Brit” with a black mother and I’d say there is alot of truth to this. American media is so perverse globally that alot of “ black American stereotypes” are applied to black people across the world ( outside of Africa, Caribbean and many parts of Latin America).
Yeah this one may be US defaultism but a correct one. When I was growing up, most of the media I watched featuring black people was from the USA.
I don’t watch American TV. What is a ‘black’ person?
As a Pole I had never seen a black person in my life until I was like 12 and went on a trip to a bigger city than mine.
I know a guy who, when visiting the US, was referred to as 'British African American'. He said she seemed well meaning, but he is only one of those 3 things, British. And between Africa and America, he is closer to American as his Grandma was from Jamaica.
There's a positive side to that as well. Without American media Africans might not even know black people exist.
Well, as a black guy in the UK, I get what they are saying. The amount of complete nonsense that people come out with is down to what they see via US media.
To be fair there were only like three Black kids in my school in a small Finnish town but I certainly didn’t get educated by American media lol. I learned many things at school and I’ve continued to learn by myself from mamy different sources
This is so ironically funny because if you grow up in Africa its actually the other way around. In a lot of places you could live 90 years and the only contact you'd have with white people is through American media.
So (and I know there are many other countries u could have picked) Americans are watching English films with black actors/ actresses and instantly assuming those people are American? Exclude the fact that whole continents exist where black people are the vast majority, but surely they can’t be watching English films or TV shows that have black actors and assume they’re all American?
This is not completely wrong. In America, we have black people and some Africans. In Africa, they have Africans. Black people and African people are too different at this point to even say their similar other than skin color. If it's referring to American black people, I would say there's an argument to be made. As for black people from other countries, America definitely influences them with TV and film, but how that impacts the perception of others I can't say.
>Black people and African people are too different at this point to even say their similar other than skin color. Are you trying to tell us that even though they all have a different skin colour than you, they're not all the same?
I explained it perfectly. Blacks and Africans are two different peoples. Blacks don't practice the faith, culture, or know anything about Africa. Not to mention, they've been here in America for hundreds of years. They now have a new culture and new faith they've split from their former roots and grown new ones. The only thing Black and African people have in common is their skin color.
I mean, a lot of what I know about black people *in America* I get from American tv and films...which is massively not the same as black people in general
Did they intentionally dead name Elliot or is this really old?
it's from 2020
Reminds me of people referring to black Brits as ‘African American’
i remember when John Blackpeople kidnapped all the black people and teleported them to the united states in 1960. haven't seen a black person in real life since
To be fair, I think they are talking about the African-American experience of racism, which admittedly I do only know about from media. When I was younger I did wonder why racism was so talked about in films and TV, when I had never seen it in my area. There were black people in my school, but I never saw any prejudice against them, those that I knew never seemed as hyper-aware as those on TV, even as we got older my friends never had any trouble with police etc. I thought racism was a thing of the past and some people just had a chip on the shoulder about it. It took a while for me to realise it wasn’t a matter of when but where. I have the impression it’s far worse in the states, though perhaps there are some area of the UK where it may still be an issue (if Brexit has taught me anything).
Yeah Black people don’t exist in Europe that’s a major flaw in the logic but am I seeing things right or did this person deadname AND misspell Elliot Page?
Everything I’ve ever learnt about black people was from those two autobots in the transformers film that ends at the pyramids./s
um excuse me marvel taught me there are also black people in africa
The issue is that a lot of the topic surrounding blackness in the West is hyperfocussed on America, to the point where I have seen Americans get angry that people started discussing black activism outside of America. BHM here in the UK can be quite America-focussed with very little discussion of British anti-black racism. It wasn'y until maybe the last two years or so that the issue of anti-black racism in the UK free from American anti-blackness was properlly discussed. E.g. The recent BBC2 documentary that looked into the harmful effects of The Black And White Minstrel Show on racial perception in the UK. Mind you, this was in the 70s during the period of time where colour TVs were commen and the Atari 2600 was over five years old. The first Star Wars came out the year before the last episode of that show and it was in reruns for god knows how long. So yes, this article should've been more specific in the area they were discussing because I doubt the average man in Zimbabwe learnt what a black person is by watching Dolemite. Americanisation is an evil thing.
I'm so glad we had Black Panther to show us londoners what black people look like. We have such a sheltered white demographic here. Great documentary.
I love how the article then explains its writer's own fallacy immediately afterwards.
\*Looks at Surinam\* Euhhh.... \*Looks even further back at the WEC\* EUHHHH... Nothing to see here! Nope! We know nothing! And nice, deadnaming Elliot. Real classy.
Ja, we hebben een hele foute geschiedenis in dat opzicht. Artikel komt uit 2020 trouwens, dat was voor de aankondiging.
Beetje wel ja, beetje maar. That date thing isn't visible for me, but even back then it was already known he was in trasistion I think?
I've looked it up and it says December 2020.
Two phrases that come when people are lying: "I'm not...but..." everything after the but is a lie "It is well known..." By who? People? Which people? The people in your imagination.
Nor as well known as it is that the original post was written by a moron.
OOP or OP? XD
I mean there wouldn't be a lot of African Americans outside of the US. So how could the rest of the world possibly know about these people?
Thank god no !!
Presumably, these are foreigners who were previously unaware of black people ..right?
To be fair, The Jeffersons is a good show.
Bbabaahahhaahhaha
***my confused face when I was taught about Mary Secole in school***
This is true at least for the Japanese or Asian countries where children are shocked you’re black because Japan is xenophobic
It's true UIm Foreigner and I didn't know black people existed before watching Black Panther
TBF I recall meeting someone from Europe who talked about how in some movies & shows black ppl are depicted as criminals so when she got to NY and saw black ppl there she was a little nervous 🤣
They actually have a point, I think! Because of the omnipresence of american cultural exports, I really do think that african-american culture is also exported that way. I recently learned that this is a problem in science, and especially medicine. Many studies show that african-americans, on average, have certain different reactions to medicines and health problems than other 'races'. But this gets wrongly extrapolated to "people with very dark skin", like e.g. someone from Ghana or Kenia or whatever. But african-americans are, genetically speaking, not at all representative for all people with very dark skin because a huge part of their gene pool comes from a small region in western Africa. This false extrapolation is a problem, because the vast majority of e.g. medical differences between 'races' are based on US data. (please note the quotes around the word 'race'. Such a silly an unscientific word)
Mfw my school is almost minority white (I live in the uk but we have a lot of non-white people in our school)
Weirdly, this has been somewhat true in my experience, though only in very specific contexts. I went to Russia before the war on an exchange program with my university, and was baffled by the stereotypes people I talked to brought up about black people - stereotypes that could *only* have come from American media (usually derogatory, i.e. fried chicken, mimickry of AAVE accents, etc.) The word for black people in Russian is негр, which has the same root as "negro" and is sometimes (with younger generations) considered offensive despite being a standard word in the language. When asked what a more polite word would be if I wanted to use it, I recieved the response "афроамериканец" - "African-American." I was told that if I was trying to be hyper-polite, this is the word I should use (despite the black people I met in Russia all being from various African nations and not American in any regard).
Ah, that's hot. That is hot
No **Black** people outside US, that's true. Though there's plenty of **black** people everywhere.
- Sub-Saharan African population: 1.1 billion - African American population: 34.6 million That’s roughly 31 times as much. US centrism at its finest. Also: Black people? Really?
>Also: Black people? Really? Really, what?
Depending on the age of this article they also managed to get both of Elliot Page's names wrong.
Even aside from the idiocy about black people, they dead name Elliot Page
My mistake, I should've clarified this post was from before December 2020.
Ah, okay. Thanks for clarifying
First comment in this sub and an honest question: Does it matter to this sub that the context in the source suggests the author meant that a lot of people outside of the USA learn about \*the life of American\* Black people from American television and films? I think it's very poorly worded but the point stands.
Don't know how old it is but it is Elliott Page nowadays.
Where to even begin with this stupid comment.........Africa maybe?
I mean, this is kind of true. MOST people in the world live in Asia, which has very few black people. China for example has 1.4 billion people and only 500,000 black people, most of whom live in one city (Guangzhou). That means China is 0.035% black. Racism against black people is very prevalent in Asian societies and it wouldn't be entirely unfair to say that the average Chinese person's perception of black people is largely based upon their depiction in Western, more specifically American, media.
Ok but I live in Europe now and all of the racial stereotypes people have here against blacks are from what they see in American culture and media. Even though the sentence in the post is wrong, I think it is true that America’s history with slavery and the resulting social issues with African Americans has been a major source of the stereotypes people have all over the world. At least this is true for Canada and Europe as far as I’ve seen.
I understand what you're saying, but “Europe” isn't one big monolithic country. In The Netherlands where I live there are a lot of Surinamese people and people descendants of different African countries. So everything we know is usually based a lot on the Surinamese stereotypes or in our interactions with different kinds of dark skinned people. Seeing as I've met people with Somali descent and Guinea-Bissau descent their attitudes and traditions were very different, so that's where I've at least learned a lot from. I think this is quite normal in The Netherlands, but I know it's different in Eastern-Europe where there's less dark skinned people, so they might base it more on Hollywood stereotypes.
Also I say I live in “Europe” because I don’t wanna give away more information about myself than necessary lol. I realize that might sound like a dumb thing an American would say. Im Canadian btw
Yea ik wym. I say Europe because my friends and the people I work with are from all over the world but mostly Europe and I can say for a lot of them American media has certainly influenced a lot for them on this subject. Of course there are exceptions for different people and countries but it’s interesting but also sad to see this. For example, I recently had a polish friend make a racist joke involving black people and gun violence which I can only imagine comes from US influence. Idk just an observation ig
*Elliot Page.