In America, do white racists show racism to white immigrants?

25 comments

1. Where I am from in the Pacific Northwest there is definitely some tension between American born people and the large Russian immigrant community but I wouldn’t call it racism.

2. >By white immigrants, i mean of course those from non English countries, so that the white locals easily recognize they are foreigners.

   You mean, say, white-skinned people from Slavic countries?

   Maybe some racism toward them. But they are white, and racists are stupid, and the skin color is the thing that really matters.

3. If they are both the same race, racism isn’t the word you’re looking for.

4. Yes. I have experienced a customer be racist towards an Albanian coworker who had a thick accent

   Also dont forget the KKK targeted white Catholics, Jews etc.

5. Not the way you think. They show they are racist to white immigrants because they think they’re among friends and like-minded thinkers.

6. Racism wouldn’t be the word. Maybe xenophobe but even then it has been pointed out the immigration is a burden to the working class of a nation so most complains are legitimate.

   Honestly a Hispanic immigrant with conservative political leanings probably would be treated better than a Canadian immigrant with left leaning ones.

   The discourse is far far more complicated by the interests of all the groups in all the situations. In San Fran you probably wouldn’t have to contend with racism very much but in Arkansas anti-immigration stances can take a thousand forms from racist and xenophobic to just passively being okay as long as it wasn’t illegal.

   Also areas you wouldn’t expect are xenophilic (admiring immigrants) this is kind of the old Tidwater sentiment you find in communities of the elderly who were abandoned by the younger generations.

   This is all to say everything is complicated and dumbing it down serves no one’s best interest in the long run.

7. The word is xenophobia and yes, there’s a lot of overlap between racists and xenophobes.

   Bigots be bigotin’.

8. I’m sure you’ll get different answers to this question but based off of my experience it depends on what country you’re coming from.

   If you’re a white person from wealthy parts of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc you probably won’t get much racism from people.

   If you’re coming from more working class areas in Europe, you might encounter some prejudice but if you’re Christian it probably won’t be anything huge.

   If you’re a Balkan Muslim or Jewish, you might encounter racism from racist people. But it depends on how often and in what circumstances you end up meeting racists.

   If you’re someone from the Middle East who isn’t visibly middle eastern, you’ll probably be fine. But if you’re darker skinned, wear a hijab, or are otherwise visibly middle eastern you’ll experience racism from racist people. Ditto for white people from Latin America.

9. There’s aszholez here. They hate everybody who isn’t Roman Catholic, white, white-collar, male. Heck, we even hate our own. We call them republikans

10. There used to be white on white racism against certain nationalities of other whites, sometimes there are still derogatory remarks made, but it is not as bad at it used to be.

11. In a documentary I watched, a couple of KKK members were having a discussion about how far south in Europe they could accept people as white. They got into an argument about Italians.

    It was like a competition to see who could hate the most people.

12. There’s some anti-immigrant sentiment but it’s limited since xenophobes tend to be more racist and are more against non-white european immigrants.

13. It isn’t as prevalent as it used to be but it’s still there. If you’re a recent immigrant with an accent, especially if you’re a blue collar laborer, there are stupid ignorant people who express contempt. Hate organizations like the KKK still despise Catholics and consider non Northern Europeans to be “race polluters”. Jews are still frequent targets of hate crimes, and immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe have been targeted by immigration agents.

    Immigrants from Ireland, Spain, Italy, Albania, Rumania, Greece, Eastern Europe, and Jews have historically put up with a lot of bullshit. And during the wars, Germans were literally getting lynched. German used to be the second most spoken language in America, but the suspicion of Germans led to them hiding their roots.

    I wanna emphasize most Americans are not racist whatsoever, and most of us treat everybody we see equally. But unfortunately there’s a tiny part of our population that is gross and racist and hate anything that doesn’t look like them.

    PS: the term “white” is dumb and doesn’t do Justice to the level of diversity that exists among European immigrants and their cultural contributions to America.

14. My neighbors are Italian and we’re saying in 70s racism to them happed. Nazis type of racism was rooted in the US historically, but phasing out from the end of 50s.

15. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, I thought the countries of Italy and Ireland must have experienced centuries of bitter warfare, given the hostility between the two communities.

    Turns out, it was just a local Philly thing. Obviously.

16. People of any group can and are racist and bigoted towards any group of people.

17. Not really. Donald Trump would regularly talk about how we need more immigrants from Norway.

18. Sometimes. I worked with Eastern European kids in the US on J1 visas, and the same reactionary asses who don’t want people poorer than them in the same zip codes could be pretty ugly toward them.

19. This assumes that there are enough “racists” to have a good answer. The huge majority of people do not care enough to have an opinion.

20. Xenophobia is pretty common in all racial communities , not just with caucasians.

21. There is a lot of history and context that is needed to really answer that question, but the answer is broadly no. A person’s skin is far more common a metric for racism than nationality.

22. No

23. Are they Catholic because then in doubly welcoming.

24. I have definitely witnessed racism against Arabs, who are legally considered white for the purposes of the US Census.

25. It depends, some racists look down on certain Europeans who dont look “White”. Europeans who come from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and the Balkan nations tend to have darker skin, and aren’t seen as “White”.

    For the longest time there was the “Evil Russian” trope on TV, that every Russian was a evil person out to get people.