What is the least racist country on the planet?

Great Debates
21

Given your comments in this thread, Brainglutton, I think you need to listen to this song about Prejudice.

Race is certainly a huge enormous deal in the US, but I don’t know that it’s the prevailing us-versus-them dichotomy in humanity at large. It seems to me that in some cultures, religious differences, or ethnic differences, are a bigger deal than race.

Suggesting Iran as the least racist country might actually have a tiny kernel of truth in it. Islam is well-known for its racial diversity, isn’t it? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a strongly Islamic culture that has very little racial prejudice. In fact, I’d suspect that the least racist country would have strong religious bigotry: people who wanna hate would have their outlet for hating and wouldn’t need to fall back on racial hatred.

[Edit: just saw Surreal’s post, which, absent rebuttal, definitely puts the kibosh on that idea!)

22

Hmm Surreal, could you explain your survey, I dont get it.

23

The Cayman Islands are a territory rather than a country, but I’ve read them referred to as “20% white, 20% black, 60% don’t know/don’t care”. I assumed this to mean that at least black-white relationships were pretty civil.

What’s the racial situation in Cuba like? (Asked in ignorance; I know there’s a fairly diverse and multiracial population but the leadership seems to be predominantly Euro ancestried.)

One of my best friends is from Rome and her husband is a black American serviceman. I asked her if she encountered racism in Italy when she married him and she said very little, but there was a lot of upset (especially among her older relatives) over the fact he was American and Protestant.

24

The first column is the country that was surveyed.

The second column is the number of respondants to the survey.

The third column is the percentage of respondants that did NOT select “people of a different race” from a list of things that they might not want to have as neighbors.

The fourth column is the percentage of respondants that DID select “people of a different race” from a list of things that they might not want to have as neighbors.
All of this information is readily available here:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/index_html

25

People were asked whether they would feel comfortable living next to someone of different race (among all kinds of other categories). The %ages of “not mentioned” are people that did not check that box, “mentioned” are people that checked that box.

Iceland/Sweden etc seem to have the smallest %. But I don’t think this is representative, really, since “race” is understood differently in different countries and is really too narrow a designation. Example: in Pakistan, only 6.5% checked the box - less than in the US. But switch the question to “Immigrants/foreign workers” and you get 29% in Pakistan (to 10% in the US).

26

I’m always surprised when watching British TV shows at how seamlessly the black characters intermingle with whites, romantically and otherwise. Rose’s boyfriend Mickey on Doctor Who comes to mind, but there are others.

In American television if a main character were to date somebody of another race it would probably be a major plot point (albeit sometimes comedically, such as the episode with Wayne Brady on 30 Rock*). In British shows the interracial aspect is rarely mentioned (though there was a funny plot on Extras about the character’s Golliwogg doll being in view while getting it on with her black date).

Is this an indication on decreased racist views in the U.K.?
*For those who don’t watch the show, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) dates a businessman (Wayne Brady) and the date is somewhere between a snore and a failure; he’s boring, nerdy (not in a good way), super conservative (she’s a liberal), and not anybody she wants to see again but she keeps dating him out of fear that if she breaks up with him she’ll look racist. Her boss Jack (Alec Baldwin) counsels her on issues he encountered while dating Condoleezza Rice.

27

“Happy Endings” - current US sitcom. One of the couples is black/white. Not very much emphasized. I think the “blackness” of the guy was used once as a plot element in his relationship with one of the male friends, but the intermarriage itself is never really mentioned/accented/used as comedy material.

28

Seems to me they’re functional equivalents. An Irish Protestant will remain one in some sense until the day he dies, even if he converts to Islam.

29

How bad is racism in Brazil? I’ve heard different things.

30

So the higher the first percentage* the “less racist is the country”? Columbia wins it, it seems. Though seeing Switzerland’s score, I can only question the accuracy of the survey.

*what’s the point of the second percentage, as it is invariably the complement to hundrer per cent?

31

They’ve got a lot of coffee.

32

The US is the least racist country in the world? You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Have you guys ever been to the south?

I lived in liberal Oregon growing up, and I was surrounded by racists. All of my dad’s friends would sit around and make racist comments. My schoolmates would constantly use racial slurs against “Mexicans.” And this is in the “progressive” pacific northwest.

So you figure, well maybe drewtwo99 just has a racist dad and had some racist schoolmates. I wish that were true. College was much better, didn’t really see any racism going on when I was in college. It was diverse and happy, and life was magical and wondrous. Then I moved to Houston, TX.

I find I am CONSTANTLY surrounded by racists of all colors and creeds. I am a gay man, and most of my friends are all gay as well. You’d think that being gay would teach some of these people that bigotry of any kind is not ok. Well, you’d be wrong. I have plenty of “friends” who constantly berate people of all races. I know a gay anti-Semite, lots of gays who hate black people, etc. So maybe gay guys are just a bunch of douchebags…

Well in my 2 years of teaching experience, I sat through many uncomfortable lunches where my fellow science teachers constantly spouted off racist bullshit. Talking about how black students shouldn’t be coming to their school, that the “shifting demographics” were bringing things down, etc etc. My close coworker was SHOCKED to find out that some of my black female students were actually passing and doing well! Imagine that. Ugh.

No. I’ve lived long enough to see that the US is full of rampant racism. Kids, adults, professionals, teachers, lowlifes… everyone. I’m so sick of it. I’d like to just kick every racist out of my life for good but I’d have to say goodbye to nearly everyone I know. It’s so depressing.

I love the US. I think it’s one of the best countries in the world. We have great freedom of speech protection, we have the right to own firearms, strong capitalism, a strong banking industry, etc. I am not trying to bash the US.

But come on, the fact that we spent MONTHS debating whether or not a Muslim community center should be allowed to be built, you know we are a prejudiced people. I know that there are Muslims of all races, and that anti-Muslim sentiment is not equivalent to anti-race sentiment, but it’s a different strain of the same disease.

ETA: I’m not saying that the United States is NOT the least racist country. It may very well be. But if it is, that is incredibly, incredibly depressing, based on my life experiences thus far.

33

In Europe, as a rough rule of thumb it seems that countries get more racist the further east and south you go. Of course, those countries tend to be both poorer and more ethnically homogenous. It often crops up in the context of sport. When English soccer teams play in eastern Europe, for example, the black players are sometimes greeted with monkey noises from the crowd. This also happened in Spain not too long ago. In other shamelessly anecdotal data, I remember a black French player who played in the English league reporting that he was surprised to see non-white newsreaders and presenters on British TV. Didn’t happen much in France, apparently.

34

Dislike of immigrants/foreign workers != racism.

35

Strictly speaking - no. When Danes dislike Swedes, that’s not racism either - strictly speaking. But in general use, it is equivalent to racism.

36

This is a more complicated question than you think, because even in countries that outsiders think of as homogeneous, different peoples often hate each other.

You’d THINK that, in an all-black African country, there couldn’t be any racism. But look more closely and you’ll usually find that the different nations/tribes within those countries hate each other and hold all kinds of bizarre prejudices against each other.

That is, you’ll often find members of black nation A saying, of black nation B, “You can’t trust them, they’re all thieves.” And black nation B thinks black nation C is lazy and shiftless. And black nation C thinks black nation A is incurably stupid. And they’ll insult each other in terms that would shock idealistic African-Americans!

37

I’m not UKian but as has been pointed out here before, some of the shows you see are created by the BBC and Channel 4 which strive to represent ethnic/gender/etc. diversity on their shows. Ethnic mixing in Britain does seem to be less of a deal than in certain parts of the US. However, this varies from region to region I would imagine. A friend of mine is of Iranian ethnicity and the racism in the area she lives in against “the Pakis” disgusts her.

38

I suppose there might be cases where this is true, but the vast majority of the time they are one and the same.

39

Mmmm, I think it’s more classist (is that a word?) than racist. Immigrant Hispanic lawyer? Coolies. Immigrant Hispanic landscaper? Boo.

40

I think the test would be to ask someone to select the Hispanic lawyer from the Anglo lawyer…or the black doctor from white doctor. People may not have the same negative reaction to the Hispanic lawyer as they would the landscaper, but they may still have negative feelings towards them.

I don’t have enough evidence to know whether the US is the least racist country, but we definitely are more comfortable talking about race than other countries (in general). In my experience, ,people from very multi-racial countries like Brazil or Cuba tend to be way too quick to downplay racism in their society, even when it’s patently obvious that there’s an pervasive racial hierarchy. Henry Louis Gates touched on this in his latest mini-series. Those two countries are perfect examples of how obliterating formal racial categories does nothing to racism except make it hard to tackle.