It’s so weird how race obsessed America is. I grew up “biracial” or mixed race as the rest of the world calls it in Eastern Europe which is the whitest place in the world. I later moved to Western Europe as a young adult. I have similar skin tone, hair texture etc. to you, and race has just never really been an issue in my life.
there definitely has been a romanticized idea of race in america that driven that has made it a bigger deal than it actually is. I’d like to bust some of those concepts to give america more of the international perspective
Thank you for your comment. In this trip I saw Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. I would recommend Ukraine if it wasn’t so difficult to travel to because airplane travel is prohibited right now. But soon I’d like to visit the rest of the Eastern European countries that I missed out on
@@SkyeSoloTravels Nice! I haven't been to that part yet. I must say that I've often heard that that are the countries with the friendliest people. I'm from Belgium and it's often said that we're friendly and open to talk to, but it's really hard to get close friends.
This is not my own idea, I read it somewhere. But I really thought it had more than a grain of truth about it. It's about how Americans seem more focussed on a person's race seeing themselves as African Americans, or Whites or Latinos etc etc. It goes like this. Europe going back in history is a continent in which traditioanlly people look similar. There is more dark hair and brown eyes the further south you go but basically it was mostly a white continent. But there were big differences between the nations. Different histories, cultures, food and of course languages. So historically in Europe what has marked out people as different has been culture and language not they way you look. As the non-white population has grown this hasn't really changed. So you will be considered French or German or British according to where you grew up, the language you speak, the culture you identify with, the food you like etc rather than the way you look. So a black person growing up in the Netherlands is going to think of themselves as Dutch rather than African European. This only falls down in places where immigrant communities have failed to fully integrate, which happens sometimes. In the USA it's almost the other way round. It is one huge country that although there are definite regional differences, does strive to have an identity as one country. But it has lots of groups of people who look different. So those different physical appearances became more important and people focus on those. Also you touched on an important point for American visitors to Europe. It doesn't matter what kind of American you identify as, in Europe you will just be another American. Nobody will be really interested in your ancestry. I saw a video made by an African American who lives in the UK and he said he quickly noticed and liked the way the British did not look at him and see an African American. He was just an American.
This is an interesting point that I didn’t consider before. Especially with America being a relatively new country compared to other countries there hasn’t been much time for us to grow with these various groups of people. That would be a good explanation for that phenomenon. It would certainly do some good if americans did more traveling to grow out of the world view that we currently have. This is definitely something I’ll look into more so I could better expand on this in another video
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It’s so weird how race obsessed America is. I grew up “biracial” or mixed race as the rest of the world calls it in Eastern Europe which is the whitest place in the world. I later moved to Western Europe as a young adult. I have similar skin tone, hair texture etc. to you, and race has just never really been an issue in my life.
there definitely has been a romanticized idea of race in america that driven that has made it a bigger deal than it actually is. I’d like to bust some of those concepts to give america more of the international perspective
For us ( Europeans ) it is ethnicity that matters more, genetics in this case. Romania for Romanians , Germany for Germans , and so on.
yeah america might’ve complicated things with race identification on top of ethnicity
I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation! I think it's really good advice. Which countries did you see?
Thank you for your comment. In this trip I saw Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. I would recommend Ukraine if it wasn’t so difficult to travel to because airplane travel is prohibited right now. But soon I’d like to visit the rest of the Eastern European countries that I missed out on
@@SkyeSoloTravels Nice! I haven't been to that part yet. I must say that I've often heard that that are the countries with the friendliest people. I'm from Belgium and it's often said that we're friendly and open to talk to, but it's really hard to get close friends.
I hear Belgium is also cool, it has been on my radar due to my french studies in college. Maybe i’ll see if i could confirm that rumor haha
This is not my own idea, I read it somewhere. But I really thought it had more than a grain of truth about it. It's about how Americans seem more focussed on a person's race seeing themselves as African Americans, or Whites or Latinos etc etc. It goes like this.
Europe going back in history is a continent in which traditioanlly people look similar. There is more dark hair and brown eyes the further south you go but basically it was mostly a white continent. But there were big differences between the nations. Different histories, cultures, food and of course languages. So historically in Europe what has marked out people as different has been culture and language not they way you look. As the non-white population has grown this hasn't really changed. So you will be considered French or German or British according to where you grew up, the language you speak, the culture you identify with, the food you like etc rather than the way you look. So a black person growing up in the Netherlands is going to think of themselves as Dutch rather than African European. This only falls down in places where immigrant communities have failed to fully integrate, which happens sometimes.
In the USA it's almost the other way round. It is one huge country that although there are definite regional differences, does strive to have an identity as one country. But it has lots of groups of people who look different. So those different physical appearances became more important and people focus on those.
Also you touched on an important point for American visitors to Europe. It doesn't matter what kind of American you identify as, in Europe you will just be another American. Nobody will be really interested in your ancestry. I saw a video made by an African American who lives in the UK and he said he quickly noticed and liked the way the British did not look at him and see an African American. He was just an American.
This is an interesting point that I didn’t consider before. Especially with America being a relatively new country compared to other countries there hasn’t been much time for us to grow with these various groups of people. That would be a good explanation for that phenomenon. It would certainly do some good if americans did more traveling to grow out of the world view that we currently have. This is definitely something I’ll look into more so I could better expand on this in another video
?? "racialization" is an American thing, in my own advice (I'm french). What ever you are, you are American. that's all.
yes it definitely is an american concept. Not a lot of us are informed of that and didn’t realize that until i experienced it myself
Go to Latin America
This is definitely on the bucket list, got any countries in mind?
@@SkyeSoloTravels for startes, Colombia
We learnt through our mistakes. Oh such big mistakes