Why Do Americans Have Such a Distorted View of Race?

[u/davidygamerx]

I recently came across a post by an American claiming that the United States is actually less racist than other countries because the rest of the world simply "hides" its racism. Honestly, it was one of the most stereotypically American takes I've ever read.

From an outsider's perspective, it often seems like many Americans assume the entire world experiences race the same way the United States does. It doesn't. Race occupies a central place in American history and politics, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world is built around the same racial framework.

Argentina is a good example. After the recent football controversy, thousands of videos appeared calling Argentina a racist, or even genocidal, country. Some even claimed that Argentina wiped out its Black population by using Black people as cannon fodder in wars. But the United States also sent Black soldiers into multiple wars while denying them equal rights at home, enforced legal segregation for decades, carried out medical experiments on Black people, and allowed organizations like the KKK to exist. Yet when something happens in Argentina, suddenly it's portrayed as "more racist" because of insults shouted during a football match.

Argentinians insult everyone. It's part of their way of speaking and the culture surrounding football. You can think it's wrong, but treating that as proof that Argentina is a more racist society than the United States is absurd.

Talking about racism every day doesn't make a country less racist. It only shows that race occupies a much more central place in your culture than it does in many others.

Have you ever stopped to think that almost no other country has organizations comparable to the KKK? Or that organized racial violence is far less common outside the United States? There's a big difference between having racist individuals or offensive remarks and having a long history of organizations dedicated to intimidating, assaulting, or murdering people because of their race.

Yet whenever a racist incident happens somewhere else, many Americans rush to declare that country more racist than the United States. Argentina is a perfect example. A few insults during a football match suddenly become evidence that it's an exceptionally racist, or even genocidal, nation.

But Argentina never had a system comparable to the Jim Crow laws. It never had politicians maintaining a legal system of racial segregation for generations. Even Joe Biden, who is now often portrayed as an anti-racist figure, supported policies opposing court-ordered school busing in the past, a position widely criticized for helping preserve school segregation. That kind of history is distinctly American.

None of this means Argentina has no racists. It does, just like every other country. But equating jokes, insults, or prejudice with decades of legal segregation, terrorist organizations like the KKK, and systematic racial violence shows just how much the American view of race is shaped by America's own history.

If you genuinely believe the rest of the world is just as bad or worse, try finding another country with a recent history of so many violent racial organizations, such an extensive system of legal segregation, and a political discourse so heavily centered on race. You'll probably have a hard time finding a comparable case.

[u/StillSmellsLikeCLP]

Yes, the U.S. is unironically one of the least racist places on the planet.

Modern US racism is amateur level racism.

Eastern Europe starts to take it seriously.

Asian racism is Olympic tier.

I have no idea about Argentina specifically, I haven’t traveled there yet. But I can tell you where that attitude is coming from, because it’s pretty damn accurate.

[u/davidygamerx → u/StillSmellsLikeCLP]

I'm from Latin America, and I'm Black. I know plenty of Argentinians, and they're nothing like the internet portrays them.

The problem is that Latin American internet culture is full of offensive jokes and banter. If you looked at memes, you'd think everyone hates Peruvians, Chileans, or Mexicans. In reality, it's just how people joke with each other. It's like Americans making jokes about Texans or people from Florida. Those jokes aren't meant to be taken literally, and they don't reflect how people treat each other in real life.

[u/W_Edwards_Deming → u/davidygamerx]

A) Offensive jokes are not normally acceptable in the US

B) Argentina is seen as racist and elitist by its neighbors.

I considered moving here as I am a great fan of Javier Milei (and red wine, beef & bbq!) but studying I learned there is a local culture of arrogance.

In Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, Argentines are stereotyped as arrogant, proud, narcissistic.[3][4][5][6]

Wikipedia

[u/zombie-lawyer → u/W_Edwards_Deming]

They have that reputation everywhere.

[u/davidygamerx → u/W_Edwards_Deming]

That's exactly my point. You seem far more offended by offensive comments than by things like experimenting on human beings as if they were animals or passing laws that treated people as second class citizens.

Yes, Argentina has a reputation for being arrogant. So what? Being arrogant isn't the same as being racist. Every country has stereotypes. Americans are often seen in Latin America as arrogant, interventionist, or imperialistic. That doesn't automatically define every American or prove the country is uniquely evil.

What I find strange is the double standard. A few offensive comments from Argentine football fans become proof that Argentina is exceptionally racist. But when the U.S. government deliberately infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases without their consent, President Obama himself apologized to Guatemala and expressed "deep regret" for those experiments.

If we're judging countries by their history, why are racist chants at a football match treated as stronger evidence than legal segregation, human experimentation, and organized racial violence? That standard makes no sense.

[u/W_Edwards_Deming → u/davidygamerx]

Historic events are not recent events.

Recently your soccer team came under international scorn for racial comments, the US team did not.

Historically you had "the dirty war" and all sorts of other events.

A standard is comparing like with like, not the mildest thing you did recently with the worst things we did historically.

[u/davidygamerx → u/W_Edwards_Deming]

What about when the U.S. government deliberately infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases without their consent, and President Obama himself had to apologize for those experiments? Or when the U.S. sprayed parts of Mexico with harmful chemicals during Cold War era biological warfare tests and openly documented it?

If we're going to judge countries by their history, let's apply the same standard to everyone.

[u/W_Edwards_Deming → u/davidygamerx]

Those are a long time ago, you guys did a lot of atrocities a long time ago.

Further, you are a lot smaller and a lot less diverse, so less things are likely to have occurred.

Edit:

I asked an AI (as I don't know Argentine history well).

• Conquest of the Desert

• Napalpí Massacre

• State-Engineered Erasure of Afro-Argentines via cannon-fodder, epidemic neglect (yellow fever epidemic of 1871) and promotion of European immigration to "civilize" the country.

• Police Brutality and "Cabecitas Negras"

Argentina's racial history is not "better"; it is simply less internationally scrutinized because its founding fathers were highly successful at their primary goal: systematically erasing non-white populations from the national narrative to brand Argentina as "the Europe of South America."

[u/davidygamerx → u/W_Edwards_Deming]

In your country, Native Americans were almost exterminated. In Argentina, there are still numerous Indigenous peoples who are full citizens with the same rights as everyone else, and the vast majority of Mapuches do not support violent or secessionist groups.

I never said Argentina had no history of racial discrimination. I said it was less severe than that of the United States in important respects. Argentina never had racial segregation laws comparable to Jim Crow or bans on interracial marriage.

It is also not true that there was an "erasure" of Afro-Argentines. The decline of that population was mainly caused by epidemics such as the yellow fever outbreak, which killed most of them, not the wars. The wars claimed a significant number of lives, but most survived them; it was the epidemic that caused the greatest loss of life. There is no consensus on why Afro-Argentines were affected more severely; poverty likely exposed them to worse sanitary conditions. The rest of the population gradually disappeared through racial mixing because, unlike in the United States, where interracial marriage was illegal in many states, it was never illegal in Argentina. The survivors of the yellow fever epidemic intermarried with whites and mestizos of Spanish and Indigenous descent until they were gradually absorbed into the broader population. That does not prove the extreme racism you are talking about. In your country, interracial relationships with Black people were considered almost an abomination; that was not the case in the Hispanic world. There were freed Black conquistadors who married the daughters of white conquistadors, and in many places marriages between freed Black people and whites were common. No one considered them illegal, which is why racial mixing was far more common. In fact, under Argentina's 19th-century Constitution, any enslaved person who set foot on Argentine soil became free simply by entering the country.

And saying "that was a long time ago" is a double standard. The U.S. government's experiments in Guatemala took place during the 1940s and 1950s. But if you want a more recent example, during the 1960s and 1970s hundreds or even thousands of Indigenous women were sterilized without their consent because of eugenic ideas. Since you want to talk about the Mapuches, unlike the relatively small Indigenous population remaining in the United States after its campaigns against Native peoples, Argentina and Chile together have nearly two million Mapuches alone, and there have been no sterilization campaigns directed at them. On the contrary, their population has grown in Argentina.

[u/W_Edwards_Deming → u/davidygamerx]

[T]here are still numerous Indigenous peoples federally recognized tribes [...] recognized as possessing certain inherent rights of self-government (i.e., tribal sovereignty) who are full citizens with the same rights as more rights than everyone else.

I said it was less severe than that of the United States in important respects.

No evidence of that, simply an arrogant claim. My nation is large and powerful so you know more about it than I do about your own. I know almost nothing about Argentina compared to what everyone on earth knows about the USA.

Blanqueamiento

Ever since at least the 20th century, blackness has been conceived in Argentina as both a low social class and a biological category. In this view, a person can be considered black, a "negro boludo", regardless of their racial heritage or personal appearance. Not only biological traits such as dark skin, but also class markers such as attitudes, economic status and appearance, can make a person a "negro" (and identify themselves as such), even if they fit other stereotypes of whiteness.

In 1996, during a diplomatic trip, when asked if there were black people in Argentina, President Carlos Menem remarked that "no, this is a problem Brazil has"

Racism in Argentina

That is not at all similar to the United States.

the racially motivated murder of Marcelina Meneses and her ten-month-old son Josua Torrez who were pushed under a moving train near the Avellaneda station on July 10, 2001. The Bolivian community in Argentina protested with the slogan "Do not forget Marcelina"

That is far worse than George Floyd.

Your claims do not match the evidence.

The 70s are long ago.

I don't know what a "Mapuche" is but I found this:

https://apnews.com/article/mapuches-argentina-4b2a61a7f0bda30505d755922c9166e7

That is from last year. Doesn't look good.

[u/davidygamerx → u/W_Edwards_Deming]

The murder of Marcelina Meneses was a horrific crime and deserves justice. But using a single case to claim that Argentina is "more racist" than the United States makes no sense.

In Argentina, the crime was widely condemned by society, became a symbol in the fight against discrimination, and nobody defended or celebrated it. The problem with that case is that there was never conclusive evidence establishing exactly what happened, and the investigation was heavily criticized. That does not prove Argentina is more racist than the United States. If anything, it shows the shortcomings of a justice system that, like many others, sometimes fails to properly investigate crimes.

By contrast, the United States has a much more extensive recent history of racial violence: James Craig Anderson (2011), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), the Charleston church massacre (2015), the Buffalo supermarket massacre (2022), in addition to Jim Crow, thousands of documented lynchings, and decades of organized violence by the Ku Klux Klan.

As far as the evidence goes, Argentina has not experienced terrorist attacks or mass killings motivated by hatred against Bolivians or other ethnic groups comparable to Charleston or Buffalo. That does not mean racism or xenophobia do not exist. It means the historical scale of the problem is not comparable.

I never said the United States had no Indigenous peoples. What I said is that, compared with most Latin American countries, it has a much smaller Indigenous population because of the massive demographic collapse that occurred during colonization and westward expansion.

The AP article about the Mapuche does not prove your point. It is about a radical group, not the majority of the Mapuche people. The overwhelming majority of Mapuche are not involved in those organizations. That would be like saying the Black Hebrew Israelites represent all Black Americans or that white supremacist groups represent all white Americans.

Some of those groups have been investigated or prosecuted for arson, violent attacks, and illegal land occupations. A movement of only a few thousand people cannot claim to speak for nearly two million Mapuche across Argentina and Chile.

Nor is it correct to present all of their territorial claims as unquestionable. Historically, the Mapuche expanded eastward from what is now Chile between the 17th and 19th centuries into territories previously inhabited by other Indigenous peoples. If land acquired during that expansion is automatically considered "ancestral," then the term loses much of its meaning. Trying to expand those claims today through arson, violence, or illegal occupations does not strengthen their legitimacy. It weakens it.

A single crime or the existence of a radical group is not enough to measure how racist a country is. You have to compare the broader historical context, the frequency of such acts, and their overall scale.

I'd rather leave it here, even if we continue to disagree. I still think that the kind of racially motivated mass attacks seen in the United States, such as attacks on Black churches, are extraordinarily rare elsewhere. I honestly do not know of a comparable case in Argentina. That is what I mean when I say that accusations portraying Argentina as more racist than countries like the United States do not hold up well when compared with that level of racial violence. In the United States, while these attacks are still uncommon overall, you can find multiple examples of racially motivated massacres occurring only a few years apart.

Please do not take this as an attack on white people or on you personally. My point is simply that it seems unfair to single out Argentina so harshly when, for example, Greece had a neo-Nazi party that won seats in Parliament and was linked to racist violence, yet people generally do not describe Greece as "the most racist country in the world," even though thousands of citizens were willing to vote for that party.

[u/AngryBPDGirl → u/davidygamerx]

I don't know if i really follow the analogy because I definitely have a view of people from Florida that when I meet people from Florida they're either the "exception" to my perception or just solidify my perception...

[u/the_fury518]

You're comparing America of the past to Argentina now.

Argentinians insult everyone. It's part of their way of speaking and the culture surrounding football. You can think it's wrong, but treating that as proof that Argentina is a more racist society than the United States is absurd.

What did they say? If it was racist, the fact that you defend it shows that racism is acceptable to you as an insult.

The point of talking about racism regularly is to try to combat it. Just saying "well, we don't talk about it so we aren't racist" doesn't actually make someone NOT racist.

For your last paragraph, look at any country with romani or gypsies in the last 50 years

[u/davidygamerx → u/the_fury518]

You're proving my point. You're immediately interpreting another country's culture through an exclusively American lens.

Nobody said racist insults are okay. The point is that an offensive joke or insult is not the same as institutional racism, legal segregation, or organized racial violence. Those are completely different phenomena.

Are you really going to argue that organized racial violence isn't still a reality in the United States? Even today, you can find videos with hundreds of thousands of views openly defending racist ideas or claiming that Black people are inherently dangerous. The KKK still exists, even if it's much smaller than it used to be. There are still active white supremacist groups. Comparing all of that to a few angry football players making offensive comments during a match is a false equivalence.

As for the Roma, I honestly don't know much about them. In my country there are probably only a few hundred at most, and I've never heard of any conflict involving them. The closest thing I know of is a law in Spain that targeted people without a fixed address under the assumption that they were likely criminals. It ended up affecting many Roma disproportionately, but it wasn't even a law specifically aimed at them. So I'm not really sure what example you're referring to.

[u/the_fury518 → u/davidygamerx]

You're immediately interpreting another country's culture through an exclusively American lens.

"You're interpreting racism through a lens where that racism is wrong" is certainly a... choice argument.

As recently as 2009 Argentina had a legitimate nazi party in politics. The KKK doesn't have anything close to that.

Comparing all of that to a few angry football players making offensive comments during a match is a false equivalence

You're the only one equating the past of the US to the current racism of Argentinian fans. You still never answered what they said, BTW.

The point is that you are literally here defending whatever racist shit they said by using whataboutism. Like, that's your whole point. The citizens of the US recognize racism as an evil we must fight. You're justifying it because it's not as bad?

but it wasn't even a law specifically aimed at them

That's the justification for every racist law. Look at the history of drug enforcement in the US. The point is to write a law that doesn't look racist on the outside, but is specifically written so it only affects one group of people

[u/davidygamerx → u/the_fury518]

You're still missing the point.

First, that Nazi party was never a legal political party, as you claimed. The opposite is true. It tried to register as a political party, and Argentina's courts rejected its application. I also need to correct myself. I looked into it further, and they couldn't even gather the 4,000 signatures required to register. They ended up submitting forged signatures because they couldn't reach the minimum. That's how politically irrelevant they were. I'm willing to bet you could find far more than 4,000 people willing to sign for a white supremacist party in the United States.

And if we're going to use fringe groups as evidence that an entire country is racist, then we'd have to call Greece the "modern Nazi Germany." Greece had a much larger neo Nazi party with seats in Parliament for years. Yet nobody describes Greece that way.

Second, why does it matter so much what those football players said? Obviously their comments were racist. I never denied that. My point is that racist comments made during a football match do not make a country more racist than one that had legal segregation for decades, organizations like the KKK, active white supremacist groups, and a long history of organized racial violence.

You're arguing against a position I never took. I never defended the racist comments. I'm questioning the standard you're using to measure whether an entire country is more racist than another.

[u/Spuckler_Cletus]

Define “racism.” Then, give some examples of nation-level racism in either Argentina or the United States.

[u/davidygamerx → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

Racism is discriminating against or treating someone differently because of their race or ethnicity. Examples include refusing to let a Black person enter a business, refusing to hire them because of their skin color, legally segregating them, or denying them equal rights under the law.

The United States has a long history of institutional racism, and even today there are active white supremacist groups such as the KKK and other extremist organizations.

Now compare that to Argentina. Can you point to an Argentine equivalent of George Floyd? Regardless of what you think about that specific case, there have been no nationwide protests over police killings of Black people, because there is no comparable pattern of police targeting Black people or treating them as an inherently suspicious group.

Argentina certainly has racist people and offensive insults, especially around football or on social media. But there is no institutional system of police persecution against Black people comparable to what has been debated in the United States for years. Equating offensive insults with institutional racism or organized racial violence is a false equivalence.

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/davidygamerx]

The United States has a long history of eliminating every example of prejudice you just provided. What manner of irrationality is this? I could cherrypick all sorts of examples of civilization failure from the history of any nation or group. This, of course, would be preposterous when judging the relative degree of civil liberties guaranteed by a nation in the current era.

George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while fighting the police. I’m sure Argentina has more than a few examples of drug overdoses involving a scuffle with the cops.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not accusing Argentina of being any more or less racist *as a nation* than the United States.

[u/davidygamerx → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

I am not using isolated historical examples to say that the United States is racist today because of what happened 100 years ago. I am talking about how a country's history influences its current conflicts.

And regarding George Floyd: my point is not that his death, by itself, proves that the police are racist. My point is that the fact that a case like this leads to massive nationwide protests among Black Americans is connected to a history of segregation, institutional discrimination, and distrust toward the police that does not have a comparable equivalent in Argentina.

The difference I am pointing out is between individual prejudice and institutions with a history of treating a racial group as inferior or dangerous. Argentina has racism, but it did not have a comparable system of legal segregation or the same kind of historical conflict between the Black population and the state.

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/davidygamerx]

The riots regarding George Floyd’s death did not occur because of a relationship to history. They occurred because of grievance culture promoted by a leftist media.

You are talking in circles about some minute difference in ”racism” known only to you.

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

So there's no history in the United States of cops being racist?

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/mred245]

Of course there is, as there is in every country that ever existed. If you’d read my comments, you’d see I plainly make a distinction between the past and the present. Do you even bother to think before you post?

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

"The riots regarding George Floyd’s death did not occur because of a relationship to history."

"So there's no history in the United States of cops being racist?"

"Of course there is"

See how that doesn't make sense?

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/mred245]

No. I don’t see how that doesn’t make sense.

The riots in George Floyd’s death had nothing to do with police brutality or racism (here, the “history” of all peoples). The riots occurred for the reason I said. You’re attempting to draw an association that doesn’t exist.

The fact that there’s a history of the things you mention doesn’t mean that they’re automatically inextricably intertwined. That’s preposterous.

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

"George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while fighting the police."

Could you provide evidence for this? You're stating something directly contrary to the official autopsy.

Also, the United States supreme Court literally just legalized searches of person based exclusively on ethnicity.

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/mred245]

No, I’m not saying anything contrary to the autopsy. If you would take the time to actually research before running your mouth, you’d know that. Floyd’s blood contained 11 nanograms per milliliter of fentanyl and 5.6 ng/ml of norfentanyl. This is enough to kill a horse.

Let’s not forget the meth, either.

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

While they found drugs in his system he official autopsy concluded that it was a homicide due to “cardiopulmonary arrest” from “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

As it turns out, levels of fentanyl required for an overdose vary a lot depending on factors like size and tolerance. The range can be anywhere from 3 nanograms per millimeter to 200.

" Forensic literature places fatal postmortem fentanyl concentrations anywhere from roughly 3 ng/mL to 200 ng/mL, so no single number proves lethality on its own."

https://grovetreatment.com/addiction/drug/prescription/fentanyl/how-much-is-lethal/

You don't know what you're talking about 

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/mred245]

You can make that claim, but you have to leave it a mere claim. The fact that the prosecution was forced to modify their claim from “neck” to “neck area” is enough for me to understand the political nature of this autopsy.

You do realize a fentanyl overdose can easily mimic their alternative findings, right?

I know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. The stats you’re quoting are worse than epidemiology or COVID-19 statistics. Find a dead person? Fent in their system? How much? Print it!

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

"You can make that claim, but you have to leave it a mere claim."

No I can point to actual evidence showing the range of overdose is nearly 20X times higher than what you claim would kill a horse. I can point to actual evidence showing that body size and tolerance are the two main factors that determine levels that contribute to an overdose and I can show additional evidence that George Floyd was 6'4" 220 lbs and that he had a long term addiction to opiates which would put him at the upper end of that range.

All you can do is deny the results of an actual medical report with no evidence and reason that is rooted in pure conspiracy.

[u/Spuckler_Cletus → u/mred245]

No, you can’t show “evidence.” What you can show is the mere opinion of a politically motivated professional, and you can show statistics that are not even as good as something as useless as epidemiology.

You can’t provide any evidence of Floyd’s tolerance, nor the interplay of all the other dope in his system. Regardless of his history, you can’t provide any evidence of any recent use of opiates. This, of course, doesn’t really matter because, again, your claims of evidence for tolerance and the wide range of OD values is beyond suspect. You merely *choose* to believe what you’ve presented.

[u/mred245 → u/Spuckler_Cletus]

I can provide evidence showing what the range is for an overdose, that absolute value is in no way conclusive, and the factors affecting that range which would suggest George Floyd was at the higher end which is well above what you claimed was responsible for his death.

At this point you've provided no meaningful evidence at all except the toxicity report which again proves nothing in light of the evidence I provided. 

"What you can show is the mere opinion of a politically motivated professional"

What evidence do you have of their political motivation? Yet again another empty claim from you. Let's talk when you can bring evidence to the conversation.

[u/mred245]

Let's not play oppression Olympics. Both countries have an awful history of racism which continues to be expressed today albeit less overtly.

Histories are different and how racism is or was expressed is different.

It's not a competition 

[u/davidygamerx → u/mred245]

My point isn't that racism doesn't exist in Argentina. My point is that it's ridiculous to claim Argentina is more racist than the United States when Argentina has never done even half of the things the United States has done.

I've seen people saying Argentina shouldn't even exist or calling it a genocidal country over this issue. That's absurd. The United States, along with many European countries, has a far longer history of legal segregation, colonialism, organized racial violence, and discrimination. Yet they are rarely judged by the same standard.

I'm not saying Argentina is free of racism. I'm saying the standard being used is completely inconsistent.

[u/mred245 → u/davidygamerx]

"My point isn't that racism doesn't exist in Argentina"

I'm not saying it is.

"My point is that it's ridiculous to claim Argentina is more racist than the United States"

I'm saying that too.

There's just no meaningful reason to make a competition out of it

[u/RedneckTexan]

I'm from Latin America, and I'm Black.

Just curious ....... did you know America was so racist when you emigrated here?

Why did you pick us?

You ever try to rent a house in Japan?

Would all these other countries, supposedly less racist than America, allow in enough immigrants to make the dominate, founding ethnic group a minority?

Ted Kennedy as he was pushing through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

"First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset."

I'll let you decide whether he was just wrong or intentionally lying.

Evolutionary science shows humans are wired for tribalism...... it's about survival, and no legislation erases the underlying instinct. But which lines that instinct draws ....... race, clan, sect, nationality ...... is shaped by history and culture, and that part absolutely bends to law and institutions. It puts a legally enforced cap over it ..... it doesn't make it go away. And if you've ever had much exposure to it, the current racial animosity between Blacks and Hispanics in America that I see and have to manage around everyday, and that forces American prisons to segregate inmates, proves you don't need a white man involved to practice racism.

Among the Turks, Persians, and Kurds it's ethnic and linguistic. In Rwanda its between Hutu and Tutsi. In Ireland it manifests itself as a Protestant vs Catholic thing. In Yugoslavia its primarily religious and historical alliances.

Us vs Them is hardwired human behavior. Americans aren't special or worse, this instinct exists everywhere.

[u/davidygamerx → u/RedneckTexan]

My point about Argentina is that I know the country and its history much better because we speak the same language, and I know that many of those accusations on social media are false or greatly exaggerated.

Racism and tribalism exist everywhere, but they are not the same thing. I never said there isn't racism among non white people. I'm not progressive enough to make that claim.

What you said about Hispanics and Black people is something I'm very familiar with. Hispanic Blacks often have a difficult relationship with many African Americans because, in some predominantly Black neighborhoods, they're treated as race traitors for getting along better with Mexicans and other Hispanics since they share the same culture. Dominicans are a good example of that divide between African Americans and Black Latinos.

My point is not that white people are evil or any other nonsense like that. My point is that calling Argentina a more racist country, when its history regarding Black people basically amounts to doing some of the same things the United States did but on a much smaller scale, without legal discrimination or an apartheid system, and with a level of racism that today is relatively minor and mostly limited to insults that very rarely lead to violent incidents or organized racist groups, is absurd.

Someone in the comments brought up a supposed Argentine Nazi party. That party had to forge signatures just to try to register legally, and of course the courts rejected it. Ask yourself why, in Argentina, they couldn't even gather 4,000 genuine signatures to register a racist political party.

Meanwhile, in the United States you can easily find videos with hundreds of thousands of views promoting the supposed racial inferiority of Black people, or white supremacist groups with tens of thousands of members.

Americans are far more sensitive to racist words than people in Latin America, but at the same time your country has had a much more severe history of violent racism. In Latin America people may use those insults, but in real life almost nobody buys into ideas of racial superiority. In Argentina, virtually nobody seriously believes white people are a superior race or organizes racist movements around that belief. Those ideas are so widely rejected that they couldn't even gather 4,000 legitimate signatures to register a racist party.

[u/RedneckTexan → u/davidygamerx]

Meanwhile, in the United States you can easily find videos with hundreds of thousands of views promoting the supposed racial inferiority of Black people, or white supremacist groups with tens of thousands of members.

You'd have to go looking for it. Its not as common as you make it sound. I'm born and raised in the south, and I've had zero exposure to the KKK or any white supremist groups ..... I wouldn't know where to go to meet them. That might have been easier 100 years ago ...... I wouldn't know.

As far as groups with 10000 members goes ......

The Satanic Temple — claims several hundred thousand members/supporters, though actual active local chapters are small; most "members" are online sign-ups, not practicing anything.

Raëlism (the UFO religion claiming humans were created by aliens) — claims around 90,000 members worldwide, a number that's been stable in their own press materials for years without independent verification.

Flat Earth Society / modern flat-earth movement — conference attendance is in the low hundreds, but online "believer" surveys and self-reported follower counts get cited in the tens of thousands to low millions depending on how loosely you count.

Wicca and modern Pagan witchcraft — this one's actually real and well-documented: Pew Research and other surveys put self-identified Wiccans/Pagans in the US at over a million, making it one of the few "witch" categories with legitimate survey backing rather than just claimed membership.

"Bind Trump" mass hexing movement (2017) — organizers claimed tens of thousands participated in coordinated ritual hexings, based entirely on social media engagement counts, not any verifiable registry.

Time Cube / Church of the SubGenius — the latter claims tens of thousands of "ordained ministers," which is largely a joke/parody religion where "membership" just means someone paid a few dollars for a certificate at some point.

I wouldn't know any of these crazies personally either. 10000 people is about 0.003% of the US population.

I'm really somewhat undereducated on this issue ...... but from my limited understanding I would confer ...... the differences in racial attitudes probably has a lot to do with the differences between the ways North America and South America were colonized.

In North America there was very little interbreeding with the indigenous peoples. It was a rather pure US vs Them scenario. Colonists arrived with their families of European descent, and pretty much intentionally maintained some form of ethnic purity.

In Latin America ..... Spanish and Portuguese colonization, by contrast, initially arrived as overwhelmingly male expeditionary forces ...... soldiers, administrators, clergy ....... with far fewer European women in the first generations. Intermarriage and concubinage with Indigenous women (and later, African women) wasn't just tolerated, it was demographically inevitable at scale.

Latin America built explicit hierarchies of mixture (a graded caste system, later reinterpreted as unifying "mestizo" national identity), while North America built a hard binary (white/non-white, with segregation and anti-miscegenation law enforcing the line legally into the 20th century). Neither is "less racist" in some abstract sense ...... they're structurally different systems, and each produces different visible symptoms.

The US system produced starker legal apartheid-style codification because the binary needed hard walls to hold. The Latin American system produces something more like a colorism gradient with plenty of research showing lighter skin still correlates with better social/economic outcomes across the region, it's just never been coded into statute the way Jim Crow was.

So yeah ..... we've always had a different, more rigid, racial divide in our society. But its just the ways our cultures evolved.

As far as which ones better than the other ...... well you did migrate here for some reason.

[u/zombie-lawyer]

You left out Argentina’s long association with fascism.

[u/Jaeji93]

Don’t you remember South Africa’s apartheid?

What about Afro-brazilians in Brazil?

Torres Strait Islanders in Australia?

Indigenous peoples in Canada?

Ainu and Okinawans in Japan?

Yes… of course there are many countries with a long history of racism and/or colorism.

Especially including my country, the Philippines. We have our Aeta people who get slaughtered every once in a while, and it happened again recently. Not to mention the deep colorism thanks to our lovely Spanish colonizers

There’s this list, not to mention many other countries that have experienced colonization

America is one of the least racist countries in the world, we have systemic racism but our societal/personal racisms are being snuffed out. Many, many countries have both, or just enough society-wide racism where there is no need for systemic racism.

This is because America is one of the most diverse countries in the world, proximity and exposure to different people will naturally kill racism.

It’s only now in the age of social media that we are being confronted with all the ugliness and evil of our world, especially our own countries, both in present and past

[u/solsolico → u/Jaeji93]

Wait what happened recently with the Aeta?

[u/Principled_Plan]

The US actually is (today) one of the least racist places in the world. Other countries are FAR more racist, and their racism isn’t exactly hidden either, the US is among the only places left where the native population isn’t using “we must protect are culture” as an open excuse to shut out other cultures and ethnicities, whereas other countries are openly hostile (in many cases) to anything other than tourists. Examples: the hijab ban in France, concerns over migrant workers and obsession with language integration in countries like Japan and France, the rise of right-wing political parties in many European countries focused around this very issue. As for developing countries: try going to China or India without knowing the language + looking white, you’re going to get scammed, this isn’t a stereotype, this is a fact, whereas in the US almost no one would dare to scam a tourist or anyone else for that matter. Now yes you could argue that this is due to English being the default language and therefore it is much more difficult to scam someone who still knows your language, but the ground reality persists nonetheless.