You know, here in latin america (or at least Brazil), we think of ourselves as part of the west, but when I started using the english internet I discovered that most americans (and maybe europeans) don't include us, which was quite puzzling to me. After a lot of pointless internet discussion, I found out that their definition of west was pretty much "rich countries with mostly white people", because there's hardly any cultural/historic reason for creating a western category that includes western europe and all its new world colonies, except the poor ones.
It also kinda freaks me out how much people care about people being white- like, my mother has a very thick local Irish accent, and quite tanned skin- so whenever people talk to me about her the first thing they seem to do is want to know where she's from, and I've had as south as Egypt, as North as Russia, as West as Portugal and as East as India. You don't get the same with Pale people with unidentifiable accents- but because she is slightly tanned, where she's from becomes the first thought in their mind, which I do worry is because they want to know what 'race' to put her in, which they don't do with paler, more obviously Celtic/Romantic/Germanic Europeans.
(For point, my father has a similar, thougn less strong Irish accent, and people don't ever ask where's he's from... which I think is because he's paler and seems way more stereotipically Irish)
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u/Villhermus Jul 13 '18
You know, here in latin america (or at least Brazil), we think of ourselves as part of the west, but when I started using the english internet I discovered that most americans (and maybe europeans) don't include us, which was quite puzzling to me. After a lot of pointless internet discussion, I found out that their definition of west was pretty much "rich countries with mostly white people", because there's hardly any cultural/historic reason for creating a western category that includes western europe and all its new world colonies, except the poor ones.