Like, i can’t genuinely understand why I see so many post and memes about things like: “White people things that black people enjoy” “Black people things that white people should try” “Thing that Asian people should make others do”
It feels like people in the U.S. the moment they see someone skin color they immediately make sweeping generalisations about them (which sounds super racist to me but OK), which also makes integration more difficult, because instead of an interesting mixture of cultures it makes for immovable blocks of stereotypes
Am I just seeing a small bubble of content or missing something or what? Please explain it to me
This is the crux. It’s a uniquely American take on how you deal with a country that has seen dozens of waves of immigration (starting with the illegal immigration of colonization) from many different places over a fairly short timeframe. American culture is kind of like a fork, with a unified base that has integrated but very distinct tines (bear with me… combining the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” tropes is HARD!). At their best, memes and jokes like that can be an invitation to genuine dialogue. At their worst… well… not that. A lot depends on who is putting them out and with what agenda in mind.
Statistically, most European countries seem to be estimated at somewhere between 80%-90% “white,” likely to mean “of exclusively European extraction beyond any sort of family memory,” and I wager the vast majority of those people are from the core borders or frontiers that might well have shifted in the last few centuries. America hasn’t had that sort of percentage for over 40 years, and even then the white population was more “assorted crackers.” Even back into that era, most areas will have had at least two and likely three to five statistically significant populations that would have been visually and culturally distinct (not that this in ANY way implies that these groups were treated equally by the power structures… OMG far, far, FAR from it). These people don’t have to give up their distinctiveness to remain American, and when considered in good faith, particularly by those who mostly live in the base of the fork, the sorts of things you’re describing can be more celebratory than divisive.
I’m not going to suggest Americans are particularly good at multiculturalism (another understatement), but we’ve been at it a long time and specific practices and trends have grown up around it. The balancing act of racial and ethnic awareness without descending into judgment is probably one of the more complicated aspects of navigating American culture, regardless of whether you were born to it or looking on from the outside. So much so, in fact, that certain small-minded people think we should just snap the tines off the fork and pretend the nub was always a spoon.