I hope this is not too stupid of a question, if it is I already apologize in advance.

Basically my girlfriend and I who are from Germany are planning to travel to the USA. We were hearing stuff that some Americans socially divide people by their ethnicity. I just wanted to ask online whether this is true and if there could be any concerns because my skin is very bright and my girlfriends skin is very dark.

Normally we never really cared or talked about this since at least in our community (where we are from) no one makes a thing out of it and we both just identify as German. But I heard that in some procedures in America you have to say what your ethnicity is? We even heard things like that in some places they divide people by “skin color” and base different cultures on that (we noticed that people from America even speak and behave differently based on whether they identify as “black” or “white”) and even have schools for primarily people with dark skin or so. And this concept is very new to us since our skin was never any topic for us and we are somewhat insecure that someone could say something since we look so different and are a couple and we don’t know if this could be “weird” for some Americans?

I assume that’s probably not the case and I’m somewhat misinformed, which is why we just want to make sure there isn’t anything that we have to know or potentially have to be concerned about.

  • AnAmericanPotato@programming.devEnglish
    37·
    10 hours ago

    Racism in America is real. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably just living a charmed life and incapable of accepting that their personal experience is not universal.

    I don’t have the time or energy to prove this exhaustively, but here’s a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black

    In 2019, as reported by NBC, the Stanford Open Policing Project found that “police stopped and searched black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than used in stopping white drivers, who are searched less often but are more likely to be found with illegal items.”

    Please refer to the citations on that page for more details. Lots of studies in various states showing the same thing. The fact that the mere existence of racial profiling in America is still debated, when it has been consistently proven again and again for decades, is itself a clear indicator of a different kind of racism.

    Here’s a little story that stuck in my memory, about how a white woman finally came to realize that racial harassment by police was a real thing. It’s kind of hilarious, in a dark, face-palmy kind of way. https://franklywrite.com/2020/06/01/a-white-woman-racism-and-a-poodle/

    • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      7 hours ago

      Upvoting this 1) Because that story with the poodle is amazing, and 2) Having lived that charmed life and then dated a black person for a few years, it really is eye opening how different their reality is in the US vs white folks.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
      1·
      7 hours ago

      … Germany has racism too, both by the state and the population. They shouldn’t visit the US because there is racism here?