Greentext

Most violence is intraracial.

You had more action on your vacation than I have living here. Granted, I don't know where you went.

I think this is just normal. I felt the same way traveling in Europe. I think it's just the combination of being in an unfamiliar place and standing out as a traveler. A lot of scammers target travelers intentionally.

many of you have guns and there’s much more violence and insanity in general

Every third article in the UK is about "Knife Crime!!!" The French and German news networks make it sound like Paris and Berlin are active war zones. FFS, even the Swedes are insisting half the country is living out the plot of Taken.

Like, I'm sure the US is marginally less safe than Europe. But I suspect that has more to do with Europe just being on-average five years older than the US. By and large, both continents are extremely safe. Violence - particularly street violence - is extraordinarily rare. And the areas where it does crop up tend to be between people who know each other and having some kind of deep interpersonal dysfunction (abusive spouses / parents, school kids fighting one another over some accumulated grudge, sports hooligans brawling with their rivals).

What we have, in practice, is a handful of highly glamorized violent events (school shootings, most notably) that get international news coverage. FFS, we spend more time covering shootings in the US than we do covering our active military campaigns abroad.

I experienced the opposite feeling, spent my high school summers in London and always felt like laughing when people would warn us off rough neighborhoods that were safer than the safe neighborhoods where I was from.

It has gotten much less violent here since then.

1980s to 2000

Believe it or not this still left us rougher than the US in general or even Florida in general. But look, since 2000

Gay: OP is taken for a ride by a group of guys

Yep. And confused white boy who just straight up admits he is lost?

He very probably is just lost, and thus isn't looking to start anything.

Mutually beneficial solution to all involved is just... help him get home.

Win win.

It's relevant if we assume it's america, because the white suburban middle-class american assumption is that all poor black people will murder and kill you and have no human decency. When of course, the truth is most folks in these places are decent and the crime is minority of the residents who are in gangs and other organized activities.

And trust me, tons of these people exist. I meet live in a city full of folks who claim to be liberal progressives but are utterly terrified to be in the same restaurant as anyone black. The racism is really really deep here, esp among those who claim they aren't racist.

But people are dumb monkeys and fear is one of our most powerful/driving emotions, to the point it's the an amazing tactic for fueling brain-rot political takes and policies based in 'black people are all bad people' nonsense. And also, more lately, latino immigrants from south america whose skin color has any significant melanin.

The fact he was white and they were black is only relevant because [their target audience] is expected to relate to the boy’s fear of black people.

Yes, it's used as a bait-and-switch.

Gonna get schwifty in here!

Racial profiling is bad. Profiling based on where you are is not necessarily bad. If I were to find myself in a bad part of town and a group of guys came up to me, it wouldn't matter if they were black, Hispanic, white, or Asian; I'm going to be nervous. Meth and other hard drugs know no race.

This is easier to say in a comment than in real life

The unfortunate thing is, it sort of works. If you were able to stop and search 100 people as a cop, you would have more success stopping "stereotypical gangsters" than random people. And yes, many of those stereotypes are based on race and social status.

It creates many other issues, from discrimination to trust in institutions to pushing people into crime, but the sad thing is, the basic concept kind of works.

Statistically speaking the most likely person to murder me is my husband.