SuperScienceGrl

The different races not mixing thing happens here too. It took me months to notice it, until one day I saw a group of giggling girls hanging out, and something in the back of my mind said "huh, those girls are all friends, and they're all African-American - what a coincidence". Then suddenly my mind blew and I realized "wait.... everyone here is like this".

It's true. In this particular town there is a lot of racial diversity, but almost no racial integration. Whether the people in question are American or not does not seem to matter, it's largely just the race. As soon as I saw it for the first time, I realized it happens everywhere in this town. And yes, it probably does sound insane if you live in a place that's not like this. I was kind of stunned at first.

lizzyq

Where we lived in the UK there was maybe less of a racial divide, but very much a gender divide. If a group of couples went out for a meal the women would all sit at one end of the table and the men at the other end, steveq & I found that very peculiar.

Michael

I'm not sure where you see all the racial integration in Europe. In the late '60s and early '70s not only didn't I see racial integration but I seldom saw someone of a different race in Europe and I worked at CERN, University of Geneva, plus I spent two years traveling on a plane to different cities and I don't remember a single non white working at any of those places. At that time, Geneva surprised me since it had the UN but I could count on one hand the number of non whites that I saw during the time that I lived there.

Since then, I've been to Europe on business and vacation many times and I haven't seen much diversity let alone integration except now in Geneva, there appears to be quite a few Asians. I'll admit that when I'm on vacation or business I usually don't stray beyond the nicer parts of the cites but London, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, Budapest, Prague, and Cannes has very little racial diversity in the center of the cites compared to New York City, San Francisco, and all of the Silicon Valley.

Dewey

There's self-separation in the cities in both countries. In England schools and neighbourhood trends change with the local arrival of particular immigrant groups and subsequent departure of the previous occupants, very clear who lives where in any city in Britain, some groups make more effort to integrate, others are rejected by their neighbours whatever they do. Here folks have been rubbing along for longer, so the divide is more visible in architecture, transportation, and the workplace. In Richmond, VA, the divide is apparent simply walking from one street to the next. Across the south there are plenty of train and greyhound bus stations across the South that still have a larger and a smaller waiting room, but now anyone can use either. In northern Virginia while schools were integrated by the early 70's there are zip code divisions. When visiting cities like Pittsburgh, Richmond, and DC the divide is apparent on the buses and trains that serve black neighborhoods. In the work place if the janitorial, security, postal and administrative staff are mostly black that may be because they are who make up the working class labour pool in that city.

Pulaski

I say you're wearing rose tinted spectacles. The US has some racist wingnuts, but has no counterparts (at least not that get any publicity) to the National Front, the British National Party, or the English Defence League.

Don't get me wrong, the US has some issues, but they are similar to those in the UK, and any difference in race-crime statistics must be interpreted in the context of their being far higher rates of crimes of violence in the US than in the UK. In other words, simply saying there is more race-crime per capita in the US may not be indicative of a more racist society when it might just be indicative of a more violent society.

Anian

Why would they be needed when one of the main political parties will happily jump to their anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim tunes?

Nutmegger

Last I heard, the KKK and other white supremacist organizations were alive and well, and keep rearing their ugly heads.

Pulaski

They're pretty small beer compared to the profile the British National Party and the EDL have in the UK where EDL marches have attracted fairly substantial numbers, and a lot of publicity, and the BNP has won both MEP seats and local council seats.

Either you're pretty far to the left if you can't tell the difference between the rhetoric of the more nationalistic members of the Conservative and Republican parties and the rantings of the low-brow mouthpieces of the BNP and the EDL, or you're just trolling.

Anian

I know there is a difference - one is rich and can get both rich and poor racists to vote for him, the other is not rich and can get poor racists to vote for him. Non-political racist groups in the US tend to be several geographically distant groups rather than a single entity, but there are plenty of them: from the Neo-Nazis of Montana to the KKK, all have their own specific racial hatred for their local area.

Pulaski

..... and are collectively completely inconsequential and couldn't get elected on any level, unlike the BNP in the UK. ...... So which country has the bigger problem with race relations? ..... I believe that is an apples and oranges question, with both countries having significant issues.

Sally Redux

on BE.

CelticRover

The hate groups are out there in varying degrees of intensity.

Hate Map | Southern Poverty Law Center

Anian

Why would non-political racist groups go for election? You cut that part out of what I said so you could create a strawman to knock down, but did it so blatantly that it is laughable.

Pulaski

You've lost me. You twisted what I said to suit your prejudices and argument and then complain that I took the thread off the rails.

Carry on.

Hiro11

It's rich that people in the UK and Europe in general love to bash race relations in the US while meanwhile the UKIP is far more radical than any mainstream US party, the BNP are lunatics and thinly disguised (or not disguised at all) racist fascists like Greece's Golden Dawn, France's FN, the Dutch Party for Freedom and many others are actually in elected positions across the continent.