I've gotten a few notes insinuating this is a U.S. specific issue, and I want to clarify that not only is this definitely a problem in many places across Europe, but also "Americans are overly sensitive snowflakes who get offended at everything" is a common talking point I've heard from people from various places across Europe, and I'm not even talking about what would be a legitimate criticism like a USAmerican tourist getting offended by a nude statue in Italy, I'm talking about how common it is to hear things like "I can't believe Americans are so sensitive and fragile that I can't even use racial and ableist slurs around them without them getting upset and offended! What a bunch of whiny sensitive snowflakes!"
For example when I was taking a media class here at the University of Iceland, I had a few French classmates in that class, and one time for class we had to watch something were there were ableist jokes about a man with cerebral palsy, and one of my French classmates said "I'm not American and don't want to sound like a whiny American who gets offended at everything, but I thought it was insensitive how they made fun of and beat up that man with cerebral palsy and we were supposed to find that funny, sorry to sound like an American!"
When I lived and worked in Finland for about half a year I heard from multiple Finnish colleagues how ridiculous it was that Americans are so sensitive and uptight they actually get upset when you use the r-slur around them, what a bunch of uptight whiny babies!
When I worked retail at a souvenir shop in central ReykjavĂk one of my Australian co-workers asked some of our other co-workers from many various countries across Europe to stop saying racist things about customers of color, to which more than one responded something along the lines of "Oh come on you're not American, are you? Oh don't act like a sensitive American who has to cry racism at every little thing!"
When I worked an office job in the tourism sector, several of our tour groups coming from the U.S. in 2023 still had mask mandates while on the tour bus, especially when most of the people in those tour groups were elderly and/or disabled. Or many tour groups coming from the U.S. required the group to start wearing masks if someone in the group tested positive for COVID while in tour. And again, most of the people in these tour groups were elderly and/or disabled. None of our tour groups from other parts of Europe had policies like this.
My (all Icelandic) co-workers laughed and made jokes about this non-stop, things like "I can't believe Americans are so crazy and uptight that they're still afraid of a little germ in 2023! Come on it's Iceland, we're not still doing ridiculous things like that here because we're not still scared of a little germ in 2023!". One of my co-workers would specifically say things like "Well I'm a viking so I'm not scared of a little germ! Come on, they should come and cough and breath on me because we're vikings here, and vikings aren't scared of a little germ!", and generally endlessly talking about how still requiring (elderly & disabled) people to wear a mask in 2023 is proof of how ridiculous and uptight USAmericans are.
This isn't me trying to defend the U.S., this is me being sick of how much this wretched western Eurasian peninsula that due to racism we all like to pretend is its own continent uses the U.S. as this sort of scapegoat. By that I mean people love to pretend that problems that very much do exist in Europe don't actually exist here, and only exist over in the U.S.. The more we get away with this, the harder it gets to address these problems that do very much exist here when they're often dismissed as "well that's only a problem in the U.S., we don't have problems like that here in Europe!" but actually very much do. And I am very sick of it honestly.
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