Maggie's Farm

@ Assistant Village Idiot - As your son may have figured out, one of the reasons Europeans are having trouble coping with the numbers of refugees is we've really never had to deal with foreigners on this level before.

Prior to WW2, less than .01% of the German population had ever met a black person face to face. While this may seem unbelieveable to an American, remember that Germany, unlike the British or French, was never a colonial power so we never really left our own borders.

Germans, for the most part, had only experienced blacks and non-whites as they existed in publications or movies, but few actually met one in their personal lives. As such, Germany, and most of Europe, didn't really have to deal with blacks in the same way Japanese didn't really deal with whites prior to the war.

So as collective thinking goes in any isolated situation, everyone else probably thinks and acts just like us, because "we" are all we know.

Towards the end of WW2, when Germans first encountered black American soldiers, it was a positive thing as the soldiers gave civilians food, chocolates, chewing gum and protection. Germans quickly learned Americans were here to help us. Unlike the Russian soldiers who brutalized and raped the civilian populations they encountered, Germans had a very good experience with Americans and with black American soldiers. Again, they're like us, just a different color.

There is no German collective experience to what America has gone through with regards to our experience with blacks; no history of slavery, no civil race demonstrations, no race riots, no segregation, no affirmative action. So the experience for most of us is that they can't be that bad and why all the fuss?

Even when the Turks came in, they came in relatively small numbers. No big problems came up, and everyone just dealt with it. Now the experience is completely different. Now Germans are understanding what all the racial problems are about in the US from first hand experience such as we saw in Cologne.

The liberals said multiculturalism was a good thing for everyone. And when only a few multicultural people came here and worked, went to schools and become part of the community, everyone was happy and thought it was a great idea. Having a Persian kid or Nigerian kid in class was "cool" in the same way anything unique and non-threatening is cool.

However, that idea has changed so rapidly, it's the shock to our belief system that makes this all the more difficult to deal with. That and the fear of being called a Nazi if we say anything against multiculturalism. It's a really bad combination.

We have come to understand our ignorance of what large, non-Christian, foreign populations of non-whites who don't think or act like us can do. Some lessons must be experienced to be learned. And that's exactly what's happening now.

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Thank you for allowing me to join in the forum. I hope the German point of view can help explain why we think and act the way we do. I know it often doesn't make any sense when you apply American logic to European problems.

Back on the immigration numbers, you might want to read up on the immigration of Germans to Texas, Wisconsin and the mid-west. I believe during the late 1800, about 1,000 German immigrants were arriving every week. And the populations of some towns settled by Germans never actually learned English for several generations.

The assimilation of culture and language of foreigners is an old issue for America, but it's relatively new to us.

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@ Fjord - Many German truck drivers envy the American truck driver and their lifestyle on the highway. We have only the "cab over" trucks here. No Kenworths or Macs with their long noses.