Hello welcome to Ireland. Before you enter, we must determine how white you are, ask you about your religion, and measure your skull.

  • sailorfish [she/her]
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    4 years ago

    It feels a little silly when you live in Europe and it's Dublin, but honestly it's not a weird thing to ask?? In Germany and Austria my POC friends get stares in smaller cities. (And they're born here, speak German perfectly, etc.) Not exactly dangerous but not super fun either. Are we suddenly pretending Europe isn't racist af to own the Murricans?

      • sailorfish [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        Sure that's fair. I also find Americans' passion for keeping track of ethnicities past idk grandparents to be bizarre and tiresome. But I was reading through the comments on the original Reddit post and people were like, super offended that OP is afraid Europe's racist lmao

          • cro [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            As a mexican, I've had 2 friends get assaulted by locals in Ireland, in different trips, so yeah, pepper spray may be a good idea.

              • cro [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                It wasn't a mugging, it was assault. A hate crime.

                Y si, son de varo, si no como chingados te pagas unas vacaciones a europa?

            • ADamnedFool [any]
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              4 years ago

              I live in Dublin right now. In general the normal rules of society dictate that its weird to talk about race and you're going to lose friends and acquaintances if you bring it up as a negative. Except against the travelling community (that's kind of an indigenous white people group, that's a whole other weird thing). Where you would run into trouble is there are a lot of people who are basically outside of society due to poverty and basically lack of an opportunity to be part of it. Wages have been down since 07/08 a lot and even before the neoliberal squeeze was on. On top of that there is near zero class consciousness in spite of much wider unionization than you see in the states. These people would have basically died if they lived in the states. And the kids of these essentially outsiders in their own country don't buy into social rules because why the fuck would they do nothing for them and specifically target them as worthless. That's where you're most likely to hear an N bomb and get punched. Its different to the American version of this in subtle ways that are hard to explain, like it seems much more likely to happen to someone who's visiting than some black guy who has obviously lived in Ireland his whole life. Even then its unlikely unless you go into bandit country. Where that starts and ends can be hard to tell though.

      • fuckhaha [any,none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        The bit seems like "applying how Americans talk about visiting nonwhite countries to an extremely white country" but the path there is a little muddled

      • Magjee [any]
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        4 years ago

        Yea

        Sometimes people ask me advice for visiting South Africa, I told them your skin colour wont really matter much. They will know you are a tourist and that is more dangerous than anything, since they know you are an easy mark.

        So stay inside the safe bubble of tourism, don't try to venture out, or you will very quickly find yourself in the real Africa. Travel with a tour group to the safari and get back to the hotel with a group.

    • Sen_Jen [they/them]
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      4 years ago

      Asking if Dublin is a tolerant city is harmless. Asking if they accept "white mutts" is just weird race obsession

        • nohaybanda [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Could be internalised racism? I dunno, shits weird, but I'm a white dude so I'm happy to keep my mouth shut on the subject.

      • theChariot [any]
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        4 years ago

        it's almost like the Americans who can afford to travel abroad are rich racist assholes or something

    • fuckhaha [any,none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Not that Germany and Austria aren't racist, but I've always heard that Bavaria and Austria especially feel moreso exactly because of the staring thing which is supposedly a cultural trait, where Austrians don't have any qualms about staring in public the way they do in most countries.

      • sailorfish [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        Maybe? I mean my friends lived here all their life. It's not like they cry into their pillows every day about it - they're used to it. (And stares is the least bad thing they've gotten from strangers obv.) But at the same time it's present enough that they've complained to me about it, and as they grew up in the staring culture, I guess they feel when the cultural trait slips over into racism. I hope that makes sense, can't figure out how to word it haha

        (For the record I also sometimes get stared at when I speak Russian with my family on the street, but as I am an immigrant and not from a staring culture, it bugs me lol)

        • fuckhaha [any,none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          For sure Austrians both in and out of Vienna are racist as fuck, just that I've heard the comparison made a lot to specifically western Switzerland, where I grew up. Switzerland is about as xenophobic as Austria if not moreso, but if they were racistly staring at you in Switzerland and you locked eyes they would do the quick look away thing, whereas in Austria they just keep staring. That's what I've been told anyway

      • Druckknoedel [she/her,they/them]
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        4 years ago

        I lived in Austria for a year and they were ridiculously racist and xenophobic, it was awful. It went way beyond normal cultural staring. I lived in a smallish town though, could be better in larger cities I suppose.

        • fuckhaha [any,none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          I think its more, racists stare everywhere you go but in most places I think shame makes them look away when you catch them staring, whereas in Austria they're less primed to have that shame reaction. My impression of Vienna is that it is not an especially racist European capital but Austria as a whole is very xenophobic.

    • Churnthrow123 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      The idea that Europeans have never seen a non-white person before is just insane. Especially coming from a person who's half white and claims that they pass for Latin or Arabic or something. She's acting like everyone in Ireland is a Aryan model who is gonna freak out at someone with dark hair and a tan