> While racism is a problem in Poland, it's not a systematic racism like in the US

Are you sure about that? I haven't spent much time in Poland, but I've spent quite a bit of time in the baltic states and systemic racism absolutely is a problem there. It's just (mostly) against Jews and Roma rather than black people. I fully expect this is the case in Poland too.

EDIT: yes,as I thought.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Poland

In a way, it's even worse: because America sets the tone of discourse and frames racism as white vs black, Polish and other Eastern European cultures feel justified in claiming they don't have any systemic racism, when in fact it's there, just not against black people.

I recognize this in my own country (Ireland) where people will so proudly declare we are not racist because we treat black and Indian immigrants well by comparison to the US. However, Irish culture has deep systemic racism rowards the Traveller minority. Getting most Irish people to admit this is basically impossible though, and I expect it's the same for racism towards Jews and Roma in Poland.

I'm Polish, and I would say, the only way right now racism is less bad than e.g. US is that Poland is pretty much racially homogeneous. Mostly all white Polish people, huge proportion is single religious denomination, at least notionally (Catholic Christian). The 'discriminatable' minorities are very small and not very visible, but when they are discernible, boy do they get abused.

Where non-white non-christian non-straight people appear, they seem to be at way too high a risk of verbal or physical violence. Hard to know about discrimination at jobs etc., but wouldn't surprise me. Poland refused to accept Syrian war refugees, but reluctantly agreed to accept some Syrian Christians (so it's none of those "terrible Muslims"). No help - so many still got beaten up and chased away.

That said, I agree with the original comment. Racism in Poland is _completely_ different in Poland, and mimicking US projections of it is counterproductive, and frankly, offensively patronising.

> [...] but reluctantly agreed to accept some Syrian Christians (so it's none of those "terrible Muslims"). No help - so many still got beaten up and chased away.

Could you link an article about that? I wasn't aware.

> systemic racism absolutely is a problem there

But it's not the same thing and it happens on a completely different scale.

Systemic racism in US means that

"the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 31 fatal shootings per million of the population as of August 2020."

Which is completely out of scale for European standards (at least 3 orders of magnitude worse), including the somewhat more problematic countries in East Europe.

EDIT: for comparison in Italy in 2019 3 people were shot dead by police, without any ethnic implication, it means 1 fatal shooting every 20 millions of the population, or 0.05 every million, VS 31 every million.

To look at it in another way: you need to gather 20 million people in Italy so that one of them risk of being shot by the police, it only takes 33 thousands black men in US. It's 620 times more dangerous for a black man in US to encounter a policeman than it is in Italy.

EDIT 2: -1 after only 6 minutes.

It explains a lot about what's wrong in American culture...

Oversimplification, but Western Europe basically doesn't have a problem with police violence. That (very important) aspect of what's going on in the US just doesn't translate to a police force with very different culture and much better accountability.

It's great that we don't have that problem (people not being shot is a good thing), but that doesn't mean we don't have racism.

If you're talking about scale, then yes police violence in Western Europe isn't comparable to the US. Saying there's no problem seems like almost wilful ignorance though.

Well, the "problem" is that there are not many different races in Poland, so it is hard to judge how racist we are.

The most racist thing you can see here is people staring at blacks or Asians. Because it is quite unique thing to see.

Just like when I was in South Korea and my wife was asked to pose in a picture of young Korean girl.

Similar thing happened 50 years ago, when my mother-in-law asked a black fellow to pose in a picture with her.

But that is expected when someone is unique, intriguing.

When I was young I lived in the south of Poland where we had a Roma minority. And I as a kid was afraid of them, because they were different from me and most of the time I saw them begging on streets. But same thing happened when I saw non-Romas begging on streets, just because they were dressed in old, torn and smelly cloths.

I have personally not met any Jews that I know of, because here you don't have any visual clues, it just like meeting an Orthodox Catholic, one would need to introduce him/herself like one to be recognized. And that maybe would result in interesting conversation, but thats it.

There is another negative issue here with large south city in Poland and Jews - Cracow. There is a district there that was mostly Jewish before the WW II, and now there are a lot of visitors from Israel schools that come there to look at the old buildings and synagogues. And because those are children in a difficult age and look quite unsupervised (besides the bodyguards that act very aggressively towards Poles) and leave quite a mess in hotels where they stay.

And there are also Brits :), you can recognize them because most of them walk in T-shirts during winter and are quite loud and like to have stag parties in Cracow, and also leave quite a mess in pubs/restaurants/hotels.

>Well, the "problem" is that there are not many different races in Poland, so it is hard to judge how racist we are.

Well, the Poles didn't bring in slaves from Africa and had them working at their planations and so on for centuries though, so there's also that...

You don't need slaves from Africa if you can enslave your own people through serfdom.

If you enslave your own people it's not racism them, so that's a different problem...

I’m not saying it’s racism.

In Poland pretty much all land owners, anyone of any wealth and intelligentsia were killed either by the Nazis or the Soviets. It's as if the US had a purge 70 years ago and anyone of any means was killed or sent to a labour camp. US still reaps the benefits of both slavery and the past and ongoing discrimination of its minorities - Poland on the other hand does not. First the Partitions of Poland have erased the country from existence for nearly 100 years, then Nazis killed over 2 million people starting with anyone who had anything valuable first, then 50 years of communism made sure than any kind of systematic exploitation based on serfdom was eradicated and burnt to the ground. While it is taught in history books, the entire class of people who might have been perpetuating the practice have simply been killed off or exiled.

I'm not blaming Poles for it (being a Pole myself), just making an observation.

Again, the key word here is " it's not a systematic racism like in the US" - I'm not(obviously) trying to say that racism doesn't exist in Poland - it does and it's a problem. Just that the entire country isn't built on racist behaviour like US is/was, it's not systematic as in the country as it exists now(and largely how it existed in the post WW1 shape too) wasn't built with racist institutions and principles. Again, and I cannot stress this enough - that doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist there.

There seems to be confusion about “systemic” vs “systematic” here. Systematic racism would imply a system that is designed to achieve racism. The more common term is systemic racism, which implies racism more or less as a “side effect” of a structure or system that arguably has a different, benign purpose.

I'd argue that the American system was systematically build to be systemic :)

There are laws in the US that, on the surface, seem to be benign, but upon closer inspection are specifically and systematically created to target a certain racial group disproportionately.

FYI, "systemic racism" is usually understood to be roughly "discriminatory treatment is embedded in the institutions". For example, if Roma get stopped by police more often, that's systemic racism.

I think you use it to mean "it played a major role in the founding of our country". Saying "there is no systemic racism in Poland" makes sense in that context, but probably not in the other, and that's why people are doubting you.

Does that not also prove the point? The US view of racism being white against black eclipses all other forms of racism, including white A against white B, or even black against white.

That's not to say white against black is only a US problem, because it isn't, but it helpfully masks all other local problems and pretends they don't exist because "America said so".

Yes, it does. I wasn't arguing against the original point, on the contrary, I agree with it. I was arguing against the claim that Poland is free of institutional racism.

Yeah, I don't know about Poland specifically, but the black players in the England football (soccer) team quite often get racially abused in Eastern Europe/Balkans.

> In a way, it's even worse: because America sets the tone of discourse and frames racism as white vs black,

This. In Denmark the biggest minority is the Muslim minority, but we have still had big Black Lives Matter demonstrations with only a slight Middle Eastern twist.

>In general I lament the americanization of worldwide media, as if America is some kind of paragon of behaviour that everyone should emulate, and whatever social phenomenon is happening there it must be valid elsewhere. That's simply not true.

Well said! I would wager that this has become true in almost all countries and the effects are very insidious. Many real problems are often obfuscated and sidelined by the latest media export from the US which has no or at best marginal relevance in their local countries.

> Many real problems are often obfuscated and sidelined by the latest media export from the US which has no or at best marginal relevance in their local countries.

Or in their local counties (in the US).

I'm an American and I also lament the americanization of the American media. When I was younger, you watched the news to learn the facts about what had occurred (or was occurring or was expected to occur). I no longer trust that the major news sources are accurate and/or truthful (and I don't even want to talk about those who get their news from social media).

This has nothing to do with paragons or moral values. I think it's emergent behavior. If there is media that provides something people want, people will view it and be exposed to any message good or crappy within.

I remember when I had a queue of 5 star documentary movies to watch. I still ended up watching the 2-star scifi movies ahead of them. Had nothing to do with value of the message delivered in the documentaries.

I noticed this when internet comments for newspapers were still common, which I suggest bringing back actually.

But these divisive topics just got so much more engagement than far more important news and the media began to increase that type of content because of their precarious financial situation (Good luck earning a living wage with online news).

I remember one instance were there was an article about a important EU wide policy decision. It had around 25 comments. Next was some article about pop culture and gender. It had over 1000 comments. At one point it becomes self-reinforcing when people want to know why others comment that much...

Yup, Poland would be very different even just from daily experience. In 20 years of living there, I have not only not interacted, but not seen a single black person. And I expect that would be the same case for majority of people. Any racism would likely be more personal or based off silly stereotypes rather than systemic. (Not that it wouldn't exist completely)

It's the same in Greece. Black people are very few and far between, so there isn't much pronounced racism against them. There's a lot of racism against Albanians, Pakistanis, Syrians, etc, though.

Interestingly, black people here don't tend to commit much crime. It might be because they're too few to be in the media, but I'm realizing I've never heard of a crime here being committed by a black person.

> Any racism would likely be more personal or based off silly stereotypes rather than systemic.

I had a similar experience in this part of Europe. But I'm quite convinced that we don't see systemic racism against black folks there because they are such a small minority.

People are as racist as everywhere else (maybe even more so because of the lack of diversity in their country). I'm willing to bet Poland has its own minorities it's systemically discriminating against.

Sure, there are other minorities: Ukrainians, Belarusian, Jews, Roma, Germans, and others who deal with different prejudices depending on the region. I meant the original comment specifically about black people.

> In 20 years of living there, I have not only not interacted, but not seen a single black person. And I expect that would be the same case for majority of people. Any racism would likely be more personal or based off silly stereotypes rather than systemic.

I don't follow. How can you make such judgement, if you "not only not interacted, but not seed a single black person"?

> Any racism would likely be more personal or based off silly stereotypes rather than systemic.

So, just a few bad apples then? I think, some knowledge is transferable after all.

Because to have systemic racism, by definition you have to observe something happening on a large scale. There is no scale there. There are isolated interactions mostly. It could be widespread racism, or a small number of racist people. The n is too small to tell.

> Because to have systemic racism, by definition you have to observe something happening on a large scale.

Systemic only means "relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part".

If you and practical most people in Poland (or a lot of other countries) have never seen or talked to a black person, that is related to the system. The way you and others have formed an opinion about foreign people, or people of different faith, or sexual orientation, that is inherent to the system in Poland.

Now, the question is, what is the experience of those likely few black people in Poland interacting with other people? Do they experience in most interactions negative prejudice, or are they only experiencing it in isolated cases, or even not at all?

The way I see it, the learning we should take from the US is, that as a member of the majority, one should avoid having a prejudice of how that experience will be. Because our n of those experiences will indeed be too small to tell. And if those people are telling us that their experience is bad, not to reject it as the exception (a few bad apples).

> While racism is a problem in Poland, it's not a systematic racism

I absolutely agree that transplanting US talking points wholesale into non-US frames of reference is something that's often done blindly and never really applies.

But the reason for this is that the issue is nuanced and has a lot of local context that needs consideration in its own right. It shouldn't be used as an excuse to dismiss the existence of systemic racism in your own country.

I think the above quoted line is such a pity as it truly undermines the rest of your otherwise excellent comment.

There is a specific reason to say it: 98% of polish population belong to a single ethic group, and even of the remaining 2% the vast majority are what most people would consider to be "white". Non-white people tend to be very rare even in metropolitan areas (maybe to a lesser extent in Warsaw), and they are usually either students or high-income people moving to Poland for professional or relationship reasons. In general, Poland isn't a very tempting target for immigration.

This said, you can argue there is some systematic racism against the Roma or Ukrainians. But it's more based on culture and national identity, so its different than what an American would think of then hearing the term.

Also "white" is typically not a category you speak of. Ethnicity is much more important and it's often lost on americans in my experience who tend to promptly dismiss differences between e.g. Ukrainians and Poles.

Your final paragraph is what I would think of.

Your opening paragraph seems to commit the same mistake the original commenter was lamenting: you're defining racism purely through a US lens and asking if the same is present in Poland. The framing of that question isn't valid.

Well, you have conveniently omitted the next couple words from that sentence - "it's not systematic racism [like in the US]", which is what my argument was built upon, and the reason for the entire comment. Media treat is as if American problems not only exist in Poland, but also as if they have the same root causes as in the US.

Poland does of course have systematic racism problems - for instance against the Roma people, of whom there is a non-insignificant number and who are discriminated against literally everywhere. Same with immigrants, regardless of their skin colour - Ukrainians who come to work in Poland are treated very poorly and portrayed negatively just for who they are. That is systematic racism.

BUT - it's not systematic racism like in the US where (as far as I can understand) the racism is rooted in history of slave ownership, general belief that black people are inferior and deep history of segregation normalizing the process. None of those apply in Poland, yet some people behave as if they do - and that is what I object to.

The definition of systemic racism, as a theory, is that a country (specifically the US) was founded as a racist country (black people were the property of white people). This is not so in Poland, therefore it can't be considered systemic racism.

Do you have citations for this?

My own experience of the term's usage is to simply imply that racism is part of a system's inherent structural definition, rather than being purely reliant on individual/group biases.

In particular in Europe, one very simplistic example of this is the systemic intolerance of nomadic peoples. This is not limited to individuals discriminating against nomadic people, but rather that legislation and bureaucratic processes are in place that give inherent preference to those who are not nomadic; most obviously in laws related to property rentals and ownership, but also pervading every form of corporate and public administration.

Sure:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415952786

https://www.thoughtco.com/systemic-racism-3026565

> My own experience of the term's usage is to simply imply that racism is part of a system's inherent structural definition, rather than being purely reliant on individual/group biases.

By that definition, all racism is systemic racism, since the system is made up of people.

I haven't read any of Feagin's research, but from reading that article's commentary on Feagin's research, it outlines a highly US-centric approach to defining systemic racism, which would imply that systemic racism, by definition, cannot exist outside of the US.

I don't know enough in the field to know if Feagin's definition is a popular one worldwide, or even within the US, but it seems somewhat reductive on first reading.

If systemic racism cannot occur outside of the US, what then should we refer to racism that is "systemic" as?

> By that definition, all racism is systemic racism, since the system is made up of people.

Technically, I would agree, but going that far seems somewhat pedantic.

Well, Feagin defined systemic racism, as a concept it's US-specific.

> If systemic racism cannot occur outside of the US, what then should we refer to racism that is "systemic" as?

I don't know, I sincerely don't understand your definition. How can a country be comprised of racist people but have a system that isn't, or vice versa?

We've got to ask ourselves why the media takes on the American talking points, then? Where is the searching of ones own culture and country, so that we might face-off with the unique problems we then have in our countries? Is this a problem of journalism, or is it because it is easier to adopt american problems, and thereby neglect our own, real problems?

Here in Australia, our media seems to wholesale import US content.

My best guess is that the media owners are a) American (and want to push "the American way"), and b) it's somehow cheaper.

Most journalists knows at least their native language and English. So when they need something to write about, it's easy to import some problems from English-speaking nations.

I agree, but I think adopting the American viewpoint is neither here nor there in terms of dealing with local issues.

The reason these issues are different in different places is history. "Racism" in the states, as a political issue and concept, is firmly rooted in their history. Slavery, civil war, post war confederate politics, etc. Poland, and europe generally, has different historical anchors.

Poland is a prime example, in fact. Consider what Poland was before 1938 and what it is now, demographically, ethnically, culturally, etc. Those things inform the present.

In some sense, interest in US politics may be useful (even if it is often irrational). It's easier to see these things about other countries... like a fable or morality tale. By eventual analogy, it may come around.

I think they lament it too to a degree and it has to do with English being so widely spread through internet adaptation. Previously it often was a matter of prestige for countries to spread their language. But we have seen election campaigns addressing certain demographics online that basically consisted out of an international audience. Context is broken right from the start and suddenly you might have more critics than countrymen for you domestic conversation.

I agree with people are blindly adopting such talking points, happened in my country too.

> people watching American news and for instance adopting "all cops are bastards" attitude is just dumb in so many way

Now you know how many of us in the USA feel. Yet for some reason it seems you assume that it is correct in the US. Why? If the simple fact that this social phenomenon is happening here is what validates it, then why complain when it starts happening where you live? If, on the other hand, the we are not a paragon of virtue, perhaps consider that the news is causing just the same sort of inane, invalid response here as you are concerned about seeing where you live.

It's not the same. There really IS footage of USA police shooting innocent black people. There exists no such footage in Switzerland. Swiss people protesting against Swiss police because of this footage from the USA makes no sense. US population protesting against US police because of this footage makes sense.

USA police shoot more white people than black people. I'm not sure about the innocent numbers, but most people shot by the police of either color are not innocent.

You're argument doesn't show that police violence in the US is racist, just that it's violent.

So Americans across this gigantic country should adopt the attitude that all cops are bastards?

That's a straw man argument.

I know the USA is a huge, diverse country with different problems in different areas. But it is a single country. And that single country is having a problem with police brutality against black people.

That doesn't mean all cops are bastards. It means some cops are racist bastards. And the whole of your gigantic country needs to accept that and do something about it.

No it’s not a straw man. It’s literally the specific complaint I was initially responding to in GP.

Yes, but it's a straw man argument.

If there are tons of shootings in all 50 states of "this gigantic country", to the score of 10x of that in another country, then perhaps...

Heck, in the US you're not even allowed to get out of your car when stopped by a cop lest you be shot. In Europe that's a total non issue...

> That's simply not true

I would argue that not only it is false, it is also wrong.

There are many traits of the American culture that are not desirable, in general.

The funniest thing to me is the discourse about "white privilege" when it's transplanted into countries where basically everyone used to be white. How can that be a privilege to be the same as everyone else? But people will repeat just anything as long as it's fashionable.

What you mean racism is problem in Poland? Since early '90 there is for instance a growing number of people from Vietnam and I've never heard about any attacks on them?

I don't think hating police is something you got from America. It's easy to see why anyone who doesn't fit in would hate most police forces in the world.

edit:

And now I'm being downvoted for saying this despite seeing ACAB sprayed across every imaginable surface by football fans my entire life.

Same here in Norway. Certain conservatives are attacking liberals for SJW-esque viewpoints that barely exist here, and certain liberals are attacking conservatives for systemic racism that also barely exists (that's not to say racism doesn't).

It's sad, because it pollutes important discussion on adjacent topics.

Agreed, but you cannot avoid it : the culture of the hegemon always set the norm inside its sphere of influence. There are major symbolic/social incentives for the local comprador elites to adopt American talking points.

I read that Poland has quite draconian drug laws. Such laws are what institutionalised racism is based on in the US - it comes from the premise that people from disadvantaged background will be more likely to be involved in drugs than other groups - this is of course not true, as person living on handouts is just as likely to take drugs as a rich person working in banking sector. It's what law enforcement is being focused on. I believe most western countries have this setup copied from the US and it is being used for oppression of groups that government deems undesirable. If cops were the "good guys", they would investigate why certain politicians push drug prohibition, who profits from it and why police is being used to support it. In my country if you are black, you are 6 times more likely to be harassed by law enforcement than if you were white, despite the drug use being at the same level.

No one is saying all these countries are without their own problems. What's being said is that their problems are different then the ones in the US. And these problems need to be discussed and addressed in a narrative and setting that suites the country and cultural they are applicable to. Not by applying some US template.

Also...Poland has draconian drug laws, draconian drug laws in the US led to institutionalised racism hence the situation in the US is similar to Poland...c'mon...seriously?

I am just saying to Poland is likely oppressing groups of people, just not based on race. They use the same tools, however.

I imagine the statistics are hard to get accurately (a rich person who never gets arrested isn't going to be counted as a drug user unless the study is done via survey), but is it really true that a poor person is just as likely to take drugs as a rich person? Intuitively it doesn't seem quite right, and it's hard to be rich if you are addicted to something truly destructive.

Using drugs is natural for intelligent beings. It is similar like saying only poor people listen to music. Everyone does it, but the propaganda is focused on people who governments deem undesirable.

It's also hard to bootstrap a cocaine habit if you're strapped for cash.

I know very little about Poland, but can't help but see a similarity between attitudes to the former serfs in Poland and the Irish in Great Britain.

This article touches on it: https://wachtyrz.eu/antisemitism-in-poland-each-pole-is-a-je...