_———_ in the American magazine "Holiday", + Willians discusses the extent of racism i i
» which, he says, "is crow lik — in nearly all European nations." "The only difference bohten tarts ates and European racism is in the degree, The hard truth about European racism is that it has al, s be . relative of uathonahtes.” en part of the scene: a close and constant
the American Negro author Jom
Mr. Williams relates the degree of discrimin i
ation directly to "the numb f black strangers in each country" and gives a depressing account of his periences in various European countries: Britain - "England is a place where the hot sun of racial hatred is rising
with ungodly haste .... The British people are just as bigoted as
anyone else and probably more so," France - "I have had some very good times in Paris, but .... it is becoming
increasingly difficult (to live there). ‘Sales Negres' is as
common in France as its translation ‘dirty Nigger' is in the States." italy - "I remember most of all the night a mob surrounded me while I was
walking to a delicatessen with a white secretary. In 1961, during
the Congo eruptions, Roman mobs attacked Africans and American
Negroes in the streets.” « Germany - "My first day in Germany left me with a bad taste in my mouth,
In Municy, my wife and I were refused rooms in three hotels ....
Black students find it difficult to obtain rooms." Greece - "I was jeered and hooted at on the main street in Athens by cel-
ebrators in blackface (at the Spring Festival three years ago.)" Sweden - "I found a great deal of hostility in Stockholm and the other
Swedish cities I visited ..... The Swedish-American who returns
for a visit reveals a bigotry not unlike the Southern white." Mr. Wilj:ms, who graduated from Syracuse University, has been an author, newspaper reporter and social worker. In trying to find a cause for the unexpected post-war rise in racism in Europe, he says that "the shifting patterns of war, and then of peace, have disrupted the historically rigid social structure on the Continent." The -5 million people from poorer southern European nations ~ Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavs, Turks and Algerians - have flowed northwards "in such mmbers that some countries have begun to restrict immigration." "These people," writes Mr, Williams, "are the 'Niggers' of Europe. .... Whenever I talked with Europeans about the racial impasse at home, they in turn talked about Italians, Spaniards, Greeks who had come to their lands. .... But these people ; can be absorbed into the majority in his new country because they are ‘white. Even the most naive black man living in Europe - African or American = soon comes to know this. .... The real Europe, still shot through with nationalism that often includes racism, can be stark indeed,"