European Racism. |History: The Roadmap to the Future--Europe

One often hears about how racist and discriminatory the United States is. Often this criticism emanates out of Europe. Indeed, the United States does have a sizable share of the world's racists. However, Europe has its own group of racists, so to point the finger solely at the United States is more than a little hypocritical. This European streak of racism has recently flared up again in two cases, that of Italy's decision to fingerprint members of its Roma (commonly referred to as Gypsy) community along with an surge in racially based hate crimes in Ukraine. Europe can--and should--criticism the United States (and other countries in the world) over racism, but should also clean up its own house, so to type.

Italy has passed a requiring the fingerprinting of Roma in their country in the wake of several high profile crimes by Roma. While the Italians are in the right for trying to protect themselves and the order of their country, the way to do that is not to treat all members of a racial community as suspects--which this law effectively does--even if a lot of crime occurs from individuals in that community. 'Individuals' being the main point. These crimes are being carried out by individual people. There is not some grand Roma plan to wreak havoc in Italy or something--besides, the Italians can do that on their own. Across Europe, if the Roma were given the same considerations as members of the majority ethnic communities, there would little reason why their community would not develop to the same standards as their majority ethnicity neighbors. It is because of discrimination that the situation of the Roma is so bad. And don't try to point to 'blacks' in the United States. Today, although as a group they still face social--not legal--discrimination, most 'blacks' are part of the middle of American socio-economic society.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International as reported that there's an uptick in hate crimes in Ukraine. Targeted at members of several racial groups such as Roma, South Koreans, and Jews, many of these racists seem to be neo-Nazis. As is too often the case among societies, the Ukrainian government downplays the racist elements in their population. Ukraine is hardly alone in that--many Americans, Chinese, Koreans, Europeans, Latinos, Africans, etc. try to sweep the racism in their own countries under the rug. The thing is, in Ukraine, people are being killed due to their 'race.' That is abnormal for most countries, with some African states being an exception. Meanwhile, one Ukrainian politician who analogized these 'race'-based attacks by ethnic Ukrainians to "the immune system - the reaction of a healthy body to the infection that got into it," seems more fitting for an Asian politician, not a European one.

As a continent (or subcontinent), Europe as a whole is fairly decent in respect to opposing racism. In the Italian case, the EU Parliament has scolded Italy and called on the country to immediately halt the fingerprinting. The Europeans that have personally met have seemed to be generally non-racist. Still, as with all countries and regions, Europe can do a bit more to eradicate the baseless discrimination of racism.

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