Seriously guys, I hate the current state of offtopic. Discussions are aggressive and vicious. It's more like a death match. If you don't agree with someone you get immediately talked down, belittled or called names.
What I say now may awfully sound like "I have black friends" but hear me out for a second please, it's kinda important to understand my whole point.
I'm 37 years old, I'm living for almost my whole life as a foreigner in Germany. All my friends are foreigners. Arabs mainly but also Russians, Italians ans Turks. We got discriminated because we didn't look the part all the time. Police checked constantly our IDs, we got in fights with Skin Heads all the time in the 90s. In that time we had asylum seekers dying as Nazis burned the shitty hostels where they lived. I was in jail for some time because of fight I was involved in against a group of Skin Heads. Everyone of my friends, including me, are listening to Hip-Hop. Not because we try to be "gangsta" but because we can relate to.
Here comes Zwarte Piet. Last year I made some pretty stupid comments about it because I didn't know better. I already apologized because I understood I was wrong. I still feel bad about it. Now I stand by what I said in regards of Germanys lack of context when it comes to blackface but what I said clearly offended people with context right here. That wasn't my brightest moment.
So yeah, I'm white but I know quite a bit about how shitty living as a minority can be. Even worse, as a Italian I'm "on of the good foreigners". Obviously still a foreigner but not as horrible as a Arab. Great. In that blackface thread someone flat out told me that there is little to no racism against whites.
Yeah, in the US! But what about all of Europe where everyone hates everyone. What about the Jews not that long ago? Palestinians now?
What happens right now isn't the way to fight racism or anything really. You can't just accuse everyone to be a racist, misogynist or whatever. Some people on this thread have me on their "he belongs to RacistGAF" group and it sickens me.
I know that I don't really have to care. I'm still battling with the cancer I had four years ago and I have 11 month old son. I have my mind full already.
But I do care, because I hate how you guys are treated. So, if you see me in future threads and I might not align with you 100% please don't just lump me in the worst group there is.
Please don't ignore this because of my lack in eloquence. English is my third language and this is a pretty difficult discussion to have.