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.
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/
Racism exists all over the world though. I wouldn’t say USA is a bad place to visit based on your examples, even though they are valid. If you are just traveling visiting tourist places you should be fine. I’m a brown person in the US, what are the chances of me being targeted in a different country with mainly white population? Fairly high.
… Germany has racism too, both by the state and the population. They shouldn’t visit the US because there is racism here?
you must be deluded to compare the massive problem with systemic racism in combination with the amount of hate crimes against minorities especially in the south with the situation in germany.
edit: for example, elon would be in clear violation against the Verbotsgesetz, while most of your media does not even admit that he was fucking sieg heiling.
It kinda depends on where in the country you’re going.
West Coast, and Northern East coast is going to be a hugely different experience than the middle of the country or the southern coast.
If you’re not pro Trump I would just tell you to boycott the US until it gets its shit together, especially considering that you’re planning to go to a red state.
There’s a huge difference between living somewhere and visiting it as a tourist. Most places encourage tourism and are happy to demonstrate their hospitality. Stick to the tourist areas, start interactions by saying “We’re tourists from Germany…” and you’ll have no problem.
I’m not sure what other people here mean when they deny that there is racism in the US. There are plenty of racists in this country. It’s true that they’re much less likely to hang you from a tree for being in the wrong neighborhood – I guess if your standards are that low then we have indeed made great progress. But again, they’re generally not going to mess with tourists in tourist areas.
Almost nobody is going to care unless you go places nobody cares about.
We don’t segregate people by color, but some people self segregate. There are areas with more black people or more white people, but there is no laws that say you or her can’t go somewhere because of skin color.
I am assuming she is black. There is a small chance that some people will say rude things to one of you because you are with someone of a different color. Don’t confront them, just walk away. The cops would love to ruin their whole day, so govern yourself accordingly.
We see a lot of Germans in the tourist spots, your accent will be considered adorable and we will love to know where you are from and will likely fail to repeat the name of your home city unless it is Berlin, Frankfort, or Munich. If you are from Bayern, you are from Bavaria. If they ask you to say something in German, “etwas” is funny, but you will have to follow it up with an actual sentence. Throw in an “umgebung”, it’s a fun word to us.
Also you need to understand that America is very large. Germany is smaller than our states of Illinois and Indiana, look at those states on a map and understand that things are further apart than you may think.
If you can manage the 2hr drive, Chattanooga has an awesome aquarium with a massive glass walled tank.
Ask the hotel desk where are some good local spots to get food, but the best places are not in the information pamphlet they may hand you. I hope your pants fit loose, our food can put weight on you very easily if you take in too much of our hedonistic freedom. Tip your servers, that is how they afford to live.
Ich höffe das Eures Urlaub wunderbar sind und der Amis sind freundlich. Ich weiß das Sie Amerika lieben werden. Mein Deutsch schlecht ist, tut mir leid, es ist zwanzig Jahre her dass ich Deutsch gelernt habe.
