Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Xenophobia and racism are not related. Xenophobia is about foreigners regardless of race, and racism is about race regardless of nationality. The two get mixed in the head of people from the USA because a lot of guys claim they're Irish or Italian without ever having set foot in any of those countries. If you dislike your [insert ethnicity] neighbour who was born and grew up in the same place as you did, you're being racist. If you dislike your [insert nationality] neighbour who's the same ethnicity as you, you're being xenophobic.
-phobia means an irrational intolerance, for a lot of things we express intolerance by showing fear, but to others we show aggressiveness. It depends more on the person than the subject matter, some homophobics are actually afraid of gays, thinking they'll corrupt the children or whatever stupid fearmongering propaganda they're up to these days, meanwhile some arachnofobics will kill every spider they see. And their line of thought is often quite similar, e.g. I don't hate [gays/spiders], I just don't want to see them.
Every European: "but my hatred of the French is prefectly rational, does that mean it's not xenophobia?"
Europe is not just UK. UK isn't even EU anymore, and I have never seen negative sentiments towards french people in the rest of Europe.
As a German, I can assure you, there are plenty of people with negative sentiments
I lived in Rhineland-Palatinate when I was young and I remember asking my neighbors why every Saturday they all came out to trim their grass and sweep their sidewalks and gutters clean. They said it was to show that they are not French.
I hoped it'd be read as sarcasm
It's not a serious hatred, but most major/Western European nations (at least Germany, UK, Spain, Italy and probably France themselves) have at least a friendly rivalry with the French despite being on friendly terms either since 1945 or even longer, with France having been fairly positive for Europe since at least the 80s, so it's incredibly hard to justify that the "hatred" of them is rational
Although the Italians may have twisted it into a surprisingly valid case, just ask about how almost all famous French food is just Italian recipes with a French name and they will be incredibly convincing even if it may not be objective fact
I don't understand it, but I met an American who doesn't like African Americans, but has no issues with actual Africans.
He's racist, "African-American" means black, i.e. an ethnicity not a nationality, he doesn't mind Africans because they're not near him. A similar thing for a xenophobe would be I have no problem with Mexicans, it's the Mexican immigrants I hate. Or from an aracnophobe: I understand spiders have their place in nature, I just don't want them in my house.