The reason you don't hear about things like the current anti-BIPOC pogrom, violence, organizing, and hostility in Ireland is because Europe is very, very good at controlling the narrative around itself.
One of the most successful public relations campaigns in modern history has been convincing the world that racism is primarily an American problem.
Americans are taught this.
Europeans are taught this.
People all over the world are taught this.
The United States becomes the global symbol of racism while Europe gets to position itself as the civilized observer standing off to the side shaking its head.
"Look at those Americans. Look how backwards they are. Look how racist they are."
Meanwhile Europe gets to quietly avoid discussing its own house.
And before anyone starts, yes, the United States is racist.
Racism has shaped American history from its inception and continues to shape it now.
None of what I'm saying requires pretending otherwise.
But the fact is, that people often mistake visibility for prevalence.
They hear more about racism in America and conclude racism must therefore be worse in America.
But part of the reason you hear about it is because people are talking about it.
Part of the reason it is impossible to ignore is because generations of activists, organizers, journalists, scholars, and ordinary people fought to drag those conversations into public view.
When police brutality happens in the United States, people talk about it.
When racist legislation appears, people talk about it.
When hate crimes happen, people talk about it.
When communities are targeted, people organize.
The conversations are messy. They're loud. They're often painful.
And because they happen, the rest of the world sees them.
Europe benefits heavily from a different dynamic.
Europe has spent decades cultivating an image of itself as enlightened, progressive, tolerant, educated, post-racial.
The reality is far messier. Uglier.
Because underneath that image are swathes of countries where anti-immigrant sentiment has become normalized, where far-right movements continue gaining ground, where Romani communities face staggering discrimination, where Black and brown people are routinely treated as outsiders no matter how many generations their families have lived there.
These conversations rarely penetrate international awareness with the same intensity.
The story Europe clings desperately to remains intact.
Europe remains "the good place."
America remains "the racist place."
And that framing obscures a tremendous amount of suffering.
To be clear, I say this all not as an outside observer but as someone who lived there.
And one of the biggest culture shocks of my life was realizing in retrospect, after leaving, how openly racism could be expressed.
Not hidden. Not whispered. Not confined to fringe extremists.
Openly. Casually. Comfortably.
I heard racial slurs used in everyday conversation with a frequency that stunned me.
I heard immigrants blamed for virtually every social problem imaginable.
I heard people discuss Romani communities with a level of contempt that was so normalized it barely seemed to register as hatred anymore.
Entire groups of people were discussed as though they were natural disasters instead of human beings.
And what struck me most was how little pushback there often was.
The silence. The nodding. The knowledge that everyone in the room obviously agreed.
The reason I am so adamant about not letting Europe get away with it, is because all of what I experienced, stays with me.
Racism doesn't become less dangerous when it has a cute accent.
Racism has always been capable of reinventing itself.
It learns new vocabulary. It learns new manners. It learns how to present itself as reasonable.
But the target remains the same. The people harmed remain the same. The consequences remain the same.
And one thing I think many BIPOC people who have visited Europe understand is that Europe's reputation and Europe's reality are two very different things.
We hear the stories. We talk to each other. We compare experiences. We warn each other. We know which places are welcoming and which places aren't. We know what happens when the tourists leave.
That's part of why I get so frustrated when people act as though Europe has somehow transcended racism.
It has simply become extraordinarily effective at externalizing the conversation.
Racism is always happening somewhere else. Someone else's problem. Someone else's shame. Someone else's history.
Until immigrants are targeted.
Until refugees are targeted.
Until Black communities are targeted.
Until Romani communities are targeted.
Until Muslims are targeted.
Until another moral panic erupts and people start asking how this could possibly be happening.
As though the warning signs weren't there all along.
As though people hadn't been talking about it for years.
As though the people being targeted hadn't been begging others to listen.
There is not a single U.S. state my family would refuse to visit outright.
There is not a single U.S. state that fills me with the same dread that the idea of returning to Europe does.
And I know some people will find that shocking.
I lived my life. They didn't.
I know what I heard. I know what I saw. I know how it felt to move through those spaces as a BIPOC person.
And I know that when people insist Europe is uniquely enlightened on race, all I hear is a continent's carefully curated public image speaking louder than the people it has harmed.
Pay attention to these anti-bipoc pogroms in Ireland. This is what Europe is overwhelmingly like. This time it just escaped containment.
And barely, since most of my followers didn't even know Ireland was currently doing anti-BIPOC pogroms.
