If you asked one of my xenophobic countrymen who he'd trust, a Pole or a Palestinian, the answer would probably be neither of them. Both of those ethnic groups are treated very poorly here. But if you asked him which he'd rather trust, the answer would probably be the Pole, because of religion and skin color.
On the other hand, he'd trust an African-American over the Pole, and a Dane adopted from South Korea over the African-American. Skin color is important and obvious as an ethnic marker, but Danes value ethnicity over color, and distinguish between ethnicity and color, to a much larger degree than what I have called melting pot societies do.
That sounds about right for Germany, if you replaced "Dane" by "German" in the adopted from South Korea example. (In fact, there was a Korean adoptee in my class. I can't talk about whether he experienced racism or not, but as far as I could tell the Russian-German boy, the Dutch boy and the girl from former Eastern Germany got a /lot/ more shit from our class. I can't recall anyone ever mentioning his race, whereas some of the boys made making horrible comments about people from Eastern Europe and the former East into a bloody competitive sport.)
It's... I think white privilege *exists* in Europe, but it's hugely complicated because its intersection based on nationality and ethnicity tangles things up immensely - so e.g. an African-American may garner prejudice and discrimination based on skin colour mixed in with "omg you're so cool!" on account of being American - and a lot of the times US people don't realise that in discussion. The big example I can think of here is how if people bring up "but X white group was discriminated against!" there will sometimes be an answer of "oh yeah, but that was way back and nowadays that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore!" Which, well, no. (And I can understand that they want to shut down the discussion so it doesn't derail, similarly to how talking about skin colour is a derail from this topic - oooops - but still, that statement as it stands just isn't true.)
Re: Pretend I didn't just veer off topic like this...
On the other hand, he'd trust an African-American over the Pole, and a Dane adopted from South Korea over the African-American. Skin color is important and obvious as an ethnic marker, but Danes value ethnicity over color, and distinguish between ethnicity and color, to a much larger degree than what I have called melting pot societies do.
That sounds about right for Germany, if you replaced "Dane" by "German" in the adopted from South Korea example. (In fact, there was a Korean adoptee in my class. I can't talk about whether he experienced racism or not, but as far as I could tell the Russian-German boy, the Dutch boy and the girl from former Eastern Germany got a /lot/ more shit from our class. I can't recall anyone ever mentioning his race, whereas some of the boys made making horrible comments about people from Eastern Europe and the former East into a bloody competitive sport.)
It's... I think white privilege *exists* in Europe, but it's hugely complicated because its intersection based on nationality and ethnicity tangles things up immensely - so e.g. an African-American may garner prejudice and discrimination based on skin colour mixed in with "omg you're so cool!" on account of being American - and a lot of the times US people don't realise that in discussion. The big example I can think of here is how if people bring up "but X white group was discriminated against!" there will sometimes be an answer of "oh yeah, but that was way back and nowadays that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore!" Which, well, no. (And I can understand that they want to shut down the discussion so it doesn't derail, similarly to how talking about skin colour is a derail from this topic - oooops - but still, that statement as it stands just isn't true.)