In otherwords: Is there REALLY a place where color doesn’t matter? If so, where? I want to hear from people from as many countries as possible…but I’m particularly interested in New Zealand.
Amsterdam
Was that a real answer or are you just shittin’ me?
The land of the blind (but i hear their cyclops king is in the KKK)
I think you will find racists wherever you go. Generally speaking, colour matters least in very modern, very cosmopolitan cities. Like Sydney, or London. However there are still strong elements of racism in the community.
What differs is what groups the racial tensions are between, or where the racial discrimination occurs. Eg in Australia, when you hear (and it’s quite shocking) certain people slag off “blacks” - they are talking about Aboriginal Australians. Most people of African descent there are more integrated into the non-redneck community, because the few that are there have come over on schemes like skilled migration. So they are more likely to have jobs, and be professionals, and not get slagged by racists for being “scum” or “lazy” or a “drain on the taxpayer”.
Does colour matter in New Zealand? Yes. It shouldn’t, of course. We have human rights and race relations legislation telling the ordinary citizen it’s a no-no to discriminate, to use derogatory language and terms, to reduce people to less than themselves on the strength of their hue, their national origin.
But it happens, here. With saddening regularity.
Do you mean that there are actually REDNECKS in AUSTRALIA??? Oh God. You mean rednecks exist OUTSIDE of the US ALSO?! I shall never ever refer to myself as cultured again for not knowing that factoid…
rocks in a corner clutching herself
Um…I may be out in left field here, but why is everyone suggesting countries where black people would be the minority? Ya know, there ARE countries were blacks are the majority. They may give you a hard time for being a foreigner, but not for being black.
So as far as places where black people can go without being hasseled about race, there’s a whole continent. It’s called Africa.
Actually, people of African decent are treated abismally in many African countries. What with dictators destroying economies, civil wars, and modern day slavery, I’d bet a large number of Africans would trade there situations of not being “hassled about race” for life in a non-African country where they are the minority.
I realize that’s not what you meant, Monstro, and you do have a good point about people just assuming the OP meant non-African countries.
Well, my knowledge is limited…but to my current knowledge, more black people are being oppressed in Africa than any place else in the world. And I do not believe this is the result of there being such a higher concentration of blacks on that continent. I’ll pass.
Maybe I’m just chasing my own tail and need to leave ‘well-enough’ alone.
You didn’t ask about countries where there is no oppression. You asked about countries where black people are not given a hard time for being black.
Try Dominica. It’s beautiful. 
I will put a guess out and say Brazil. While there is poverty, crime an high corruption in many parts, Brazil for the most part is pretty fair in it’s treatment of people of African decent. Not suprising, since it does has the largest poplation of people of African decent outsode of Africa. And it shows becauseAfrican influences are found in every part of the culture even more so than the U.S.
However, there is still a class line that has not been crossed and I have heard that most of the “Fair Skinned” brazilians who are on the upper crust as far as wealth goes tend to look down on blacks and mulattos. I don’t know for certain however, as I have never been there.
Another example,prehaps closer to what Monstro was TRYING to say would be like some of the west indies the West Indies,including the Bahamas,Dominican republic,Bermuda, Aruba, Jamacia,Trinidad,ect. Pureto Rico intrestingly enough is out because they tend to consider themselves a seperate peoples,and some on the extreme side try to associate themselves more europeien than asslimiated like Brazil.
Cuba.
The Cuban population has been such an ethnic mix for so long that it just doesn’t make much sense to be a racist. You’d have to hate every second person. This doesn’t mean there isn’t any racism in Cuba, just that it’s not a big problem. Besides, they have bigger problems than that. When the superpower next door has been bullying you incessantly for 40 years, you can’t really afford to be divided over meaningless nonsense like this.
A while ago I read an article (that came out around the whole Elian Gonzalez thing) about two Cuban immigrants who were best friends. One was white and the other was black but they only considered themselves Cuban.
After just a few months of being in the states, their lives were drastically different. Their friendship was no longer the same. The “white” Cuban became fully accepted into the Cuban community in Florida. His “whiteness” became apparent to him. On the other hand, his friend was not accepted by the mainstream Cuban culture. His network of people became fellow black people–not all of them Cuban. The two friends rarely crossed paths with one another, and they lived in the same city. It is was an interesting story and quite sad.
You see? The Revolution wasn’t all that bad. If the US would leave them alone maybe they could really make something of it. I would really like to see a successful example of Socialism, the way the idealists saw it.
[continuing hijack]
Yeah, that’s why people are fleeing the country in droves - it’s because of the wonderful success of Castro’s dictatorial regime.
I would really like to see Santa Claus, but that ain’t gonna happen, either.
[end hijack]
Anyway, I’m curious about the status of blacks in England. I’ve worked with two british immigrants, and they both had very different perceptions of how blacks fared. One claimed that England was a generation ahead of the US in terms of racial equality, and that racism there was virtually non-existant. The other said that while overt vocal racism was uncommon, there was a very prominent glass ceiling keeping blacks from ascending too high (citing the extremely low number of blacks in politics, and relatively low number of wealthy blacks), much moreso than in the US. Perhaps not coincidentally, the former was extremely anti-American (he would almost daily go on a tirade about how our country sucked, and how he couldn’t wait to go home), while the latter thought the US was a wonderful place.
So, can anyone shed some light here?
Jeff
I was really hoping no one would mention Cuba as a beacon of race relations, I’d hate to hijack this thread. For the record, I was born and raised in Cuba, and yes, at the street level race relations are pretty good, as they are in pretty much any caribbean island, let’s face it, nearly everyone in the caribbean has non-white relatives.
The racial problem in Cuba is at the government level, and let’s face it the Cuban government controls nearly every aspect of Cuban life. There’s an institutional racism that it’s almost impossible to describe. All the worse because government criticism is illegal. As an illustration of what I mean take a look at this page , even by the most liberal standards there is only one black face there. This is the council of ministers in a country where the mulatto/black population is 62 % .