[stevenwoo]

One of my college classmates moved about 15 years ago from working for NASA to Europe to work for ESA, I think the decision process is different for African Americans, one has to think about how one or one's child is more likely to be killed by a policeman than a terrorist in the United States (when the President cites terrorism as some existential threat to be addressed by national immigration policies versus no action on police), no matter what your status is, it was not that different for James Baldwin or Richard Wright than it is today.

[jacquesm]

That's a good point, ethnicity likely is a huge factor in making decisions such as these. That said, racism is alive and well in Europe.

[Mononokay]

It's certainly less likely to be a cause of death for your child or person, given officers in general are less armed. And in the UK's case, they ban some of the worst offenders from entering.

[jacquesm]

That's true, in Western Europe police forces are much more disciplined than in the United States. Even so, being a person of color in France is going to be a significant disadvantage in the eyes of the police, less so in most other countries but still definitely not a level playing field. I wish it were different.

What we do have is corruption, and lots of it in some places, again, less so in others. The various countries in the Union are at least as different from each other as the American states.