Ok. I don’t want to quibble about “oppressed”. it’s just a catchy word for the title.
Are there any countries or significant-sized regions where whites are on the social bottom? Where people of European descent live in relative poverty compared to the non-white population?
I don’t want to be more specific since I’m curious about anything that sort of fits this picture. I don’t even require the whites to be a minority. I would be interested in any example of a white society with a ruling non-white minority.
I’d say in Haiti, although I don’t think the white people are at the socio-economic bottom (as most of the black population lives in rural areas and I’m not sure about Port-au- Prince). After they finished obliterating all of the white population in 1804 and killing albinos for witchcraft, I don’t think white people are very inclined to go to Haiti. No racism intended
there are many white expats living in Japan and Korea and many of them (Engrish teachers and such) probably are not well-off compared to the locals and are not exactly “celebrated for their diversity” either. However, the big difference between white and Asian nations is that the Asians don’t allow immigration - so these people of the wrong race/ethnicity stay as expats and eventually leave. Meanwhile, many if not most white nations allow large number of permanent immigrants, including from poor non-white countries. I guess our troubles in this regard serve as a fine object lesson to the Asians of what NOT to do.
Recent land reforms in Zimbabwe have dispossessed a number of white landowners who used to be part of the white socioeconomic elite, and some of them have become a new “poor white” class with low socioeconomic status.
However, the white minority in Zimbabwe still largely constitutes a socioeconomic elite, much of which is quite wealthy, so I don’t think this case really meets your criteria of a society where whites as a group are typically oppressed and/or disadvantaged.
And AFAIK, no such society exists. There are societies that have white groups in their underclass populations, but AFAICT there’s no society where whites per se constitute an underclass.
The reason’s fairly simple, ISTM: for at least the past several hundred years, majority-white societies have typically been comparatively rich with respect to the global average. So when white people in significant numbers moved into majority non-white societies, it was in pursuit of power and profit rather than as poor laborers or refugees or other “underclass material”.
Aside from the question of permanent residents, of which there are many in Japan, it is certainly possible to become a naturalized Japanese citizen. Article 5 of the Nationality Law (from Japanese Ministry of Justice website):
If you want to go into the past, you might claim the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire, although that may stretch your definition of “non-white” which is, of course, not well-defined anyway.
The success pecking order for immigrants and emigrants is pretty much the same the world over.
Leaving aside arguments about what a “race” is, on average (self-described) south and east asians and whites have been substantially more successful than blacks wherever they’ve emigrated, even to places where for various periods of time they’ve been persecuted (much more an asian story there than a white story).
Efforts have been made to single out asian immigrants and punish their success (Uganda and Indian immigrants is an example) but on average, over time the success profiles for various groups is about the same across the various nations. Consider, for example, how well the Japanese have done in Brazil even though they were not historically welcomed with open arms.
Re Zimbabwe: we’ve discussed Mugabe pulling an Idi Amin elsewhere. The farms that have been taken back have, of course, been a predictable disaster with completely incompetent leadership allowing completely incompetent new owners to completely incompetently try to large-scale farm with completely predictable pitful results. Multiple excuses for why this is so have been made in the thread which discussed it.
Hahahaha. No. Upper-crust Haitians tend to be descended from mulattoes. Some of them look very different from the black majority. I have been surprised by people I think of as white or stereotypically “Latin” saying they are Haitians.
There are some sort of lighter-skinned poor people, but the ones with seriously Europeanized coloring & features are generally richies.
Well, in Los Angeles whites are a minority and we have a Latino mayor. So there’s your “ruling” non-whites for you, but socioeconomic divisions are another story…
White ex-pats in Korea teaching English are nowhere near the bottom of the social chain. For what they do they get paid extremely well and it’s considered a respectable profession. Especially compared to the Southeast Asian illegal immigrants who are constantly explioted for cheap labor.
Koreans are quite xenophobic and any foreigner is going to run into some kind fo prejudice at some time or another, but that being said, white ex-pats are better off than many of the other foreigners living here.
on the matter of Japanese immigration law, interesting info, thanks. However, regardless of the letter of the law, how many people do actually naturalize per year? Wikipedia doesn’t contain this info which suggests that this number isn’t big.
On the matter of Korea, while there are some non-white minorities who are poorer (and maybe even openly mistreated for racist reasons) than white expats, the whites are still disadvantaged compared to the locals. I am not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing or that Koreans should amend their ways, but that’s in practice what seems to be happening, for better or worse.
As far as white underclass goes, the one well-known case is the British white underclass. However, it’s not a result of non-white oppression, just something that grew out of the interplay of their welfare state, education and economic policies. Normally even the very poor whites (Jews in Nazi ghettos, Romanians during the economic crisis at the end of the Ceausescu regime, Cubans during the “special period” and so forth) still behave reasonably well.
Since we’re not quibbling over oppressed, I vote Taos, NM. I lived there for 6 years. As a white business owner I had to jump through twice as many legal hoops as non-whites. Almost all positions of authority (judges, cops, etc) were hispanic and the Native Americans had a pretty strong influence as well, as did the Tribal Police. It’s a friendly enough place to vacation because you are spending money but as a citizen I wasn’t feeling the love.
Yeah, calling the Turks non-white is pretty problematic, even ignoring that some early sultans were far more Greek than Turkish by birth ( Bayezid I was probably 3/4 Greek ). But beyond that the Ottoman ruling class was highly cosmopolitan and rather decentralized - plenty of Balkan-origined folks made it into the upper echelons of power. In fact up until the 19th century “Turk” was a disparaging word used by the Ottoman elite as a synonym for “hick.”
Median annual income for whites in SA is over 5x that of blacks and white unemployment in only ~1/7th that of black unemployment. Demographics of South Africa - Wikipedia
Going back in time, there were the White Russians in China between the World Wars. As stateless refugees, they weren’t protected by treaty rights until the League of Nations issued them Nansen passports. But that didn’t much keep them from being squeezed by the warlords/gansters who ran China back then. Luckily, they had been among the elites in Tsarist Russia, so they had the skills to function and stay cohesive as a group, but often they still had to pimp out their women to survive.
But that would be nowadays. The mulattoes resulted from the interaction between the white population and the black population, but even back then the whites were in much smaller number than the native Haitians. Nevertheless I must agree with you.