For real lmao
Like, seriously, I don't know who's more to blame for this but I'm gonna go with the English because you can't go wrong blaming the English, especially when it comes to confusing perceptions of race.
I'm gonna blame him too because "Greeks were the blacks of Europe" is a weird fucking take lol
Jeez, what a dunce. And also such a disingenuous thing, Greeks treat Albanians like shit in that country, and of course anti-Romani sentiment eclipses near all others in Europe.
At least the Albanian thing is getting better than it was 10 or 20 years ago because Albanians have kind of assimilated, kids today grew up with Albanian kids in schools, and there's many Albanian celebrities. But it's still pretty bad. Like, the US had a black president, I can't imagine Greece having a prime minister (or anything more than a MoP) of Albanian descent any time soon, let alone Romani.
Also check out this tweet in the replies: https://twitter.com/DimitriosSout/status/1194596955760078848
I don't even know what to say, this take just confuses me.
Maybe he just meant the terminology? I don't think it would be too surprising to see Europeans in 1979 amidst all the anti-colonial struggles across the globe using "Black" as a catch-all term for victims of colonialism, imperialism, and racism. I would also find it hard to imagine that blackness as we understand it in the Americas today was the same in Europe in 1979 since it has undoubtedly evolved in the last 40 years, mostly in the US.
Look, idk what kind of confusing perception they had in the UK but I know for sure that in Greece black meant black, as in the skin tone (so it includes Indians and Roma etc), and no one in Greece ever considered themselves or the Irish as black.