

It's Better Over There - sasvari
http://www.thenation.com/article/154477/its-better-over-there

======
lmz
I have to agree with the author's friend that it's easier to share with those
that are similar to you. Europe is getting quite tired of the wave of mass
immigration, partly fueled by the welfare state. The hard working immigrants
are tolerated especially in today's climate of political correctness, but what
about the ones that live off welfare and don't integrate? This does not seem
to be the case in the US where you have to work so you integrate in the
workplace.

Here's an interesting editorial I just read on that topic:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/immigrat...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/immigration-
germany-editorial)

------
elblanco
_My first day back in New York after a year in Berlin, I got on the subway and
found my end of the car dominated by an obscenity-shouting black man with a
crutch and a suitcase spilling garbage._

Apparently she has never met a homeless Roma on the U-Bahn. Except in Berlin
people won't stop to help her when she pretends to fall getting off the train,
they'll spit at her or throw trash.

 _My friend David Abraham, a historian and legal scholar, gave a fascinating
talk at the American Academy in Berlin in which he suggested that the European
welfare state is linked to ethnic homogeneity: people are more willing to
share with those who seem like themselves._

 _Muslim immigration will be the moral test, and not just for Germany but for
the rest of Europe as well._

I know the article is about Germany. But there's ample, recent, evidence that
_when_ the welfare states of Europe have problems, it's blamed (fairly or
unfairly) on immigrants. Similarly in the U.S., anti-immigration proponents
often blame the drain recent immigrants have on social services as part of the
justification for extreme policies.

Recent mass deportation events in France show that this sentiment is probably
true. Likewise, in the time I've spent in Germany, many people expressed
discontent with the wave of Muslim immigrants and the subsequent strain on the
welfare state of all these new, poor, undereducated people suddenly showing up
to the new promised land.

Europe is undergoing some massive growing pains as it has emerged as the new
go-to place for the poor unwashed masses of the world. These massive waves of
immigration are very new to the continent (and especially to the individual
countries).

But I think the American experiment can show that in the long run, relatively
open immigration policies pay off. Everybody forgets that the poor unwashed
masses from a foreign country that suddenly show up on your shores are there
for primarily one reason...to work and to work hard. That kind of free,
positive, energy needs to be harnessed. In two or three generations it pays
off with so many ways. If it's not harnessed, it goes someplace else, often
not in a constructive way. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Riots>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Why did you state that your hypothetical Roma lady only "pretends" to fall?
Seems an odd detail that separates the article's mentally ill person from your
deceptive one and the appropriate responses.

~~~
elblanco
I'll admit there's a really powerful bias against Roma as charlatans,
hucksters, con artists, etc. Some of it is well earned, some of it is a
survival response to centuries of racial discrimination and segregation.

However, I've personally been approached by several Roma over the years
feigning some debilitating and crippling disease only to watch them hop up and
run to their ride at the end of a day working the local tourist spot.

But I think France's response to the Roma is unfortunate. As an American I'm
intimately familiar with the downward spiral racial discrimination can have on
a group. A people tends to reflect back the treatment they've received.
Turning that around can take generations and instead of rounding up camps of
people and force migrating them out of your territory, integration activities
will have a much better end result.

There are plenty of Roma throughout Europe who have managed to make the jump
to integration and are productive members of society. But there's an
unfortunately very large population who, as an insulative survival measure,
live on the edges of society and siphon off whatever they can from the
dominant civilization as they can. France's actions only justify that kind of
behavior. When you never know if the winds will change and you'll be rounded
up and kicked out or worse, you tend not to want to get too close.

------
kiba
Does every political essay have to be such one-sided argument? Isn't it
important to understand the truth, the crux of the matters?

 _"Politics is the mind-killer. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which
side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all
arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing
your soldiers in the back. If you abide within that pattern, policy debates
will also appear one-sided to you - the costs and drawbacks of your favored
policy are enemy soldiers, to be attacked by any means necessary."_ \--
Eliezer Yudkowsk

------
slavat
_My theory is more primitive: a critical mass of white Americans would rather
not have something than see black and Latino Americans get it too._

A good rule of thumb: any time you see some white liberal accusing others of
racism or complaining about the plight of minorities, that person invariably
lives in a white neighborhood and--if they have children--sends their children
to a white private school or to a "good" public school in their white
neighborhood.

While I couldn't pin down her current place of residence, in the article she
mentions returning to New York, and according to an old article[1], at one
point she lived on the Upper-West Side of Manhattan. I don't know if she still
lives there, but where ever she lives now, you can be certain it's not on Adam
Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard or anywhere else where the minorities she pines
for predominate.

tl;dr version: hypocritical white liberal accuses others of racism.

[1]
[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-08/features/1995008...](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-08/features/1995008099_1_katha-
pollitt-feminism-reasonable-creatures)

~~~
elblanco
Are you claiming that the Upper-West Side is only white? Isn't that a kind of
racism? Minorities can't get rich and own houses in a fancy part of town? She
might be the only white person in her building for all you know.

I suspect that many perceived racial biases are more class biases. It's
interesting that you chose places with people of different skin colors as her
theoretical avoidance zones. I suspect she'd be just as unlikely to hang
around in poor white areas as well.

~~~
slavat
I live in NYC. The Upper-West Side is _predominantly_ white, affluent and
liberal. That was my point. And there is no chance in hell that she is the
only white person in her building.

As for her disliking poor whites, I have no doubt that she does. Rich white
liberals love to promulgate policies that harm poor whites, such as race-based
affirmative action and illegal immigration.

------
dagw
Her opening argument seems seriously flawed. I've seen scenes similar to the
one she described here in Sweden on several occasions. And by all accounts
Sweden has at least as good a "safety net" as Germany.

The really interesting part for me was that two people actually stepped
forward to help the crazy man. That is something I don't think I've ever seen
here. So the generalized point to take away I guess is Americans are far
friendlier and more helpful than Europeans.

------
yequalsx
My girlfriend is German and lives in Berlin. I just spent 3 months there. She
lives in Kreuzburg, it's a poor area of Berlin. You get the winos, drunks, and
junkies. There's a fair share of street people with mental issues. But one
thing you don't get is fear. It's a safe place by American standards. You also
don't see many cops. There are way more cops in American cities. This suggests
that it really is fundamentally safer.

I don't know why this is so. Maybe it's because of the social safety system,
maybe it's because of culture or a combination of both. But German elites want
Germany to emulate America. The social system is under attack there and the
government wants to embrace American style corporatism. It's ironic that while
it is better there those in power want to make it more like America.

~~~
bokonist
The U.S. has always had a ~10X higher crime rate than the western European
countries, going back over a hundred years. The best explanation of why comes
from a writer in 1920, Raymond Fosdick who spent years studying both the
American and various European systems. Read his book online for free:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=NGBLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=NGBLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=crime+in+america+and+the+police&source=bl&ots=zxG6FtL166&sig=Rlb7gr3KGJ_c1b23YupR9BfwSVs&hl=en&ei=1_2ETLnxCYO88gauhYSDAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)
His arguments are backed up by almost everything else I've read on the matter,
and they still remain as true today as they were in the 1910's.

~~~
edderly
I can't claim to have read Fosdick, but I see an immediate problem in that
demographics have changed through out Europe. Take for example London has a
foreign population now of greater than 30%. At the same time there are areas
in the north of England which remain overwhelmingly white which have deep
social issues.

~~~
bokonist
London is also much less safe than it was 100 years ago. Actually, all of
England is much less safe. A good treatment of the subject is Peter Hitchen's
_A Brief History of Crime_ [http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Crime-Peter-
Hitchens/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Crime-Peter-
Hitchens/dp/1843541483)

~~~
hga
England may be something of a special case; as I understand it, from around
1,300 until sometime post-WWII it had a steadily declining crime rate. One or
more things prior to the more recent wave or waves of immigration changed
that.

(I have my own thoughts on that, starting with e.g. the 1950's court
decision(s) that effectively eliminated the right of self-defense, but that's
for another discussion.)

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dantheman
Flagged - This article is nothing but racist hate bait.

~~~
dejb
How so? It seems that he is making a point that requires acknowledgement of
the existence of racism and the impact it may play in shaping social policy.
Hopefully we are mature enough to be able to discuss this on it's merits.

------
confuzatron
Tl;DR

 _"I suspect white Americans are against European-style government services
because they're racists."_

~~~
ZeroGravitas
This seems to be a fairly common theme over here in europe when discussing
American resistance to social health care. And any nation doing well with
socialist policies seem to get tagged by Americans as "homogeneous". Whether
that makes it true or not is a different matter, but it's bigger than one
random article and might be worth addressing even (particularly?) if you think
it's a false impression.

