No Stupid Questions

racism is an accepted reality in the US. racism is a denied reality in Europe.

America is still very much racist. The Trump regime is particularly racist. They seek to codify their unspoken biases.

Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times

Yes. American culture is very much based on social hierarchies, and slavery created a very easy, color-coded social hierarchy. So it's hard to get rid of because a lot of people are invested in it - whether they admit it or not.

Americans (except for the most liberal) tend to look at race as a biological reality and regard anyone saying race isn't science as woke extremism. Generally when science conflicts with common/traditional sense in America, common sense wins. The only reason quantum physics isn't banned from schools yet is because probably only about 10% of Americans know the first thing about quantum physics.

Americans also regard a wide variety of racial discrimination - such as in dating (including who you allow your kids to date), or where you live, or where you send your kids to school, as "not racist". This is considered not racist because the goal isn't to harm racial minorities, but rather you're just doing it to protect your place in the social hierarchy. The race-based social hierarchy. And if this harms minorities, well it's not like it's your fault right?

And if you dare try to suggest that the above is racist, people will get very angry at you and do things like elect Trump.

So yeah, racism is still very prevalent in the US.

I think someone can be culturally X, legally X, ethnically X, etc. for any country X. I have met people from European backgrounds who grew up solely in Japan and would consider themselves Japanese, though some often wrestle with issues, both internal and external, around that since they eyes of someone seeing them almost always see only "other" first. They hold Japanese nationality, are culturally Japanese, but not ethnically Japanese. Then again, ethnicity is its own thing as well.

It's a complicated topic and I'm certainly no expert on it. I'm a white guy of mixed western european ancestry who grew up in a town where that was the majority (and had no shortage of anti-Semites and racists, as I would find out as I got older). I've just been trying to learn along the way. I've been living in Japan for the past decade and see some of the small things that cause extra hurdles for those of foreign backgrounds (ignoring outright racism in that; just little things that only work for people whose names are <= 8 characters, require documentation only Japanese people can ever get, etc.) People who don't know me will often just use one of the words for foreigner or outsider and clarify with white person if that's ever necessary.

I guess I have a question: If you found a child with "darker skin shades" who was lost and you needed to create the most accurate description possible to the police over the phone to help them, what would you use to describe them (until the police would arrive and obviously see with their own eyes)? I think I would personally pick the closest colors for everything I could and not care about any sense of political correctness.

There have been attempts in the US (and probably elsewhere) to replace "black" with "African American" or other similar things. Ask an American Indian what they want to be called. Some would say "Native American" though others reject that because they are older than any conception of America and are not native to that nation. Others will be OK with "first peoples/nations" (often used in Canada, I think), "aboriginal", or just "Indian" since that is the term they grew up with.

A bit of humor to close off with: sometimes people from the US will travel to the UK or elsewhere and, rather than using black to describe just the skintone of the person, will say "African American"... to people who often have never set foot there and certainly aren't citizens.

Didn't you already post about this?

Scientifically race does exist in the sense that humans with certain genotypes can present certain phenotypes but we are all the same species. I don't think you can really quantify it at the individual human level though without ending up with all this old fashioned racist concepts coming into play, i.e. someone with 1/8 asian hertiage is "still asian" or whatever.

Race seems to be a bigger deal in the states because it is more politicised in terms of voting blocs. That's not to say we are immune to it in Europe like people with south asian heritage often vote for particular candidates in the UK for example.

I think one major factor in perceived differences is that our larger cities in Europe tend to be more genuine melting pots with fewer segregated areas. There are probably other reasons like having a stronger sense of civil society too.

tl;dr: race is real in a fuzzy sense but not particularly important. Europe has a different culture to the USA in some key senses.