It was always easy for Europeans to critique the race issue here in the US; after all, how much tensions can be expected in homogenous countries that are nation-states, eh!
Until now.
As European countries take in immigrants who are less and less like them, well, it turns out that differences can pose challenges. As this NY Times essay points out, "The familiar old arguments against immigrants — that they are criminals, that their culture makes them a bad fit, that they take jobs from natives — are mutating into an anti-Islamic bias that is becoming institutionalized in the continent’s otherwise ordinary politics. .... What is so striking about these forms of prejudice, which go beyond ordinary anti-immigrant feeling, is that they are taking root in otherwise enlightened, progressive states — states where the memory of the Holocaust has often led to the adoption of laws against anti-Semitism and racism. "
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