Hi there, first I hope I don’t offend anyone since this is not meant to be a bash on anyone and it’s just reflecting my personal feelings. But I assume I will get attacked anyways.
So I’m a 21 year old from Germany and we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here but the few I know who also grew up here are just like any other German and talk/behave the exact same way as every other German and also seem to be perceived like a normal German. Maybe some people might naturally be kinda surprised by people having darker skin since it’s more rare but I feel like people just perceive the different skin shade the same way they perceive different hair and eye color.
But from America I noticed that many people constantly call them “black” or “white” people and make a big thing about it as if they were a different race (and of course we scientifically know that there’s only one human race). And it seems like many Americans identify with that so much that they separated and developed different cultures, behavior and way of talking solely based on their skin shade even though they’re born and raised in the same country.
I know that there was slavery and segregation in America based on exactly this in the past but this is over and we’re living in 2025 now which is why I wonder if this is still appropriate and contemporary.
Because to me personally this kinda feels like America is still stuck in those slavery/segregation times and it makes me feel very uncomfortable every time I hear this “black” and “white” stuff which is becoming constant since American media is everywhere. And I feel like this is also influencing people overseas like here where especially younger people in cities adopt this American mindset and I’ve even seen some using the N-Word etc.
When I grew up I never even had a concept of “different skin colors” because it just felt normal that people naturally look different and I still think like this about people and see it the same way as people having different hair and eye color but I can tell that these racist ideologies are doing something to me.
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.