European countries are multi ethnic and multiracial.
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European countries are multi ethnic and multiracial. Most are modern democracies who have experienced waves of migrations from different places at different times.
The assertion of European countries as mono-cultural, white ethnostates is a white supremacist fantasy, disturbingly popular in the US.
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White Americans want to imagine themselves as part of a European diaspora and therefore fantasise about Europe as a place that is simultaneously more 'advanced' than the US and also fixed in time at some nostalgic or idyllic moment.
These fantasies are also racist in that they erase the diverse communities who actually live in the counties and fetishise a projected whiteness into a cultural superiority. The simultaneous and contradictory freezing in time makes that country an eternal, fixed homeland, free of diversity or the same structural problems of capital that plague north america.
This becomes problematic at various junctures, most often in north america, but also in europe when the US's billionaire class pumps money into fascist political projects that share their racialised nostalgia.
The idea of countries being 'advanced' relative to each other is already highly sus.
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@celesteh this also shows up in wellness where people are like "this food additive is bad because it is banned in Europe" or "this food is good for you because it is traditional in <insert European country>"
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I mean, to be fair the US's food safety laws, healthcare, and gun laws are all kind of shit, but you don't need to look all the way to the EU to find better examples. Canada or Cuba are much closer.
But, like, I've seen some traditional european food that really does not seem healthy...
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@celesteh @LeafyEricScott oh, come on, what is a bit of carcinogenic burnt matter on your pizza, it improves the taste! :D
(I'd trust the EU food safety laws way more than the US ones, but then I'm from the EU, and it's much easier to get to know about US laws (whether one wants or not) than, say, Canada or Cuba)
(but not the “traditional European food, thus good for your health”, that's just bullshit)
