# What's the most racially homogenous country in the world?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 29, 2008, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068 "2008-10-29T12:42:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/41 "2008-10-30T16:11:43Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> You mean **white European foreigners.** It is possible of course not to be white and be a foreigner. And that is not true, the capital has many expats, I doubt you knew the business expats.
I totally went back to fix that, and then my Internet cut out. Of course there were all kinds of African expats, especially Nigerians. No excuses on my part beyond that I’ve been away from home too long and it warps your brain.
Every Peace Corps Volunteer dream is to get a free ride in a Land Cruiser and invited to a party with good booze. We knew plenty of businessmen.
Yao’s western expat scene was pretty small and I knew **of** most people even if it’s in a “hey it’s that French guy who’s always at Score!” kind of way. I’m probably only a degree or two from knowing any given white (or Lebanese or Chinese) dude walking around Yaounde. Douala has more westerners and I’ll admit I know nothing about Douala.
Outside of Yaounde, Douala, Baf and Bamenda I pretty much knew every time a white dude walked outside. We had around 130 volunteers in maybe 80 towns and villages. If I even saw a white guy driving down the highway (or if a kid in my village reported back to me that he saw one) I’d immediately text everyone I knew and within a few minutes we’d usually have figured out who it was and what they were doing. A Lebanese timber baron throws a party in Bertoa, I knew exactly how much everyone had to drink. A new French guy shows up at the Garoua Supermarche, I knew if he was cute or not. A random guy is spotted walking around in Buea, I’d know where he was from. We were isolated, bored and would go months without seeing a new Westerner so whenever we did it was big news.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/42 "2008-10-30T16:21:03Z")
> [@WormTheRed](#):
>
> To get us back on track.
>
> What about Egypt or Algeria? Both mainly Arab countries, which don’t “import” laborers from Asia (like the Gulf Coast countries do) and have a big enough native population so that some immigration doesn’t “dilute” it too much.
See the C,I.A. notes on Algeria. The country is **mostly** inhabited by natives of Berber stock, with some admixture of ‘racial’ Arabs. Most of the Berbers speak Arabic, to be sure, but this is like saying that most ethnic Seminoles in Florida speak English – it says nothing about Ethnicity. There have also been a lot of Europeans, mostly of French extraction, there – while a lot of them evacuated in the fighting of 1958-62, it’s my understanding that a sizeable minority cast their lot with the Algerians and stayed.
The two countries even more homogenous than the Koreas listed on that C.I.A. thing were Tokelau and the Faeroes – which don’t even have the fraction-of-a-percent minority of the Koreas.
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### Author:  [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/43 "2008-10-30T16:26:40Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> The two countries even more homogenous than the Koreas listed on that C.I.A. thing were Tokelau and the Faeroes – which don’t even have the fraction-of-a-percent minority of the Koreas.
Can’t speek for Tokelau, but there are quite a few Danes and Icelandics in the Faeroe Islands. Which then rules them out.
Now I need to find out more about Tokelau as I didn’t even know it existed.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/44 "2008-10-30T16:49:06Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> If it had been an annexation, it would be the Kingdom of Castilla, same as when Felipe V declared Aragon “conquered land” it became a part of the Kingdom of Castilla.
Ferdinand II of Aragon, V of Castile, III of Naples. Is he the same as your Ferdinand VII?
He conquered it Navarre, made the Navarrese recognize him as king, and installed a viceroy. After that, Spanish Navarre was in a personal union with the rest of Spain.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/45 "2008-10-30T16:51:15Z")
> [@WormTheRed](#):
>
> To get us back on track.
>
> What about Egypt or Algeria? Both mainly Arab countries, which don’t “import” laborers from Asia (like the Gulf Coast countries do) and have a big enough native population so that some immigration doesn’t “dilute” it too much.
Eh, non, these countries are cross roads of trade, commerce and migration since ancient times. And Algeria has millions of French (French, Italians, Spanish, Corses, etc) colons who settle it for 100 years!
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/46 "2008-10-30T16:57:31Z")
> [@WormTheRed](#):
>
> I forgot about them. Well, it still leaves Algeria (or Tunisia)?
>
> But the Berbers in Algeria, probably disqualify it. Which leaves Tunisia in the run.
not at all, unless you only mean now people speak Arabic almost exclusively. Tunisia has Romans, has Punics, has Greeks, has all kinds of people settling it.
The only way you have a country that is “pure” (what it means pure, of course is to be defined since it is not really truly clear) is if it was long very isolated and has had very little migration. Only far off islands would meet such criteria, or perhaps far off up in Finland maybe. Iceland, the Faroes, even if there is “immigration” it is now recent to have non-Nordic or non-British Isles stock coming in. I do not know Asia, but similar places.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/47 "2008-10-30T17:14:14Z")
> [@even\_sven](#):
>
> I totally went back to fix that, and then my Internet cut out. Of course there were all kinds of African expats, especially Nigerians. No excuses on my part beyond that I’ve been away from home too long and it warps your brain.
>
> Every Peace Corps Volunteer dream is to get a free ride in a Land Cruiser and invited to a party with good booze. We knew plenty of businessmen.
>
> Yao’s western expat scene was pretty small and I knew **of** most people even if it’s in a “hey it’s that French guy who’s always at Score!” kind of way. I’m probably only a degree or two from knowing any given white (or Lebanese or Chinese) dude walking around Yaounde. Douala has more westerners and I’ll admit I know nothing about Douala.
>
> Outside of Yaounde, Douala, Baf and Bamenda I pretty much knew every time a white dude walked outside. We had around 130 volunteers in maybe 80 towns and villages. If I even saw a white guy driving down the highway (or if a kid in my village reported back to me that he saw one) I’d immediately text everyone I knew and within a few minutes we’d usually have figured out who it was and what they were doing. A Lebanese timber baron throws a party in Bertoa, I knew exactly how much everyone had to drink. A new French guy shows up at the Garoua Supermarche, I knew if he was cute or not. A random guy is spotted walking around in Buea, I’d know where he was from. We were isolated, bored and would go months without seeing a new Westerner so whenever we did it was big news.
FAir enough, although not all business expats are white Europeans, as I can say. But I was thinking Douala as the capital, which is a dumb mistake since I know better.
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### Author:  [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/48 "2008-10-30T17:41:30Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> not at all, unless you only mean now people speak Arabic almost exclusively. Tunisia has Romans, has Punics, has Greeks, has all kinds of people settling it.
>
> The only way you have a country that is “pure” (what it means pure, of course is to be defined since it is not really truly clear) is if it was long very isolated and has had very little migration. Only far off islands would meet such criteria, or perhaps far off up in Finland maybe. Iceland, the Faroes, even if there is “immigration” it is now recent to have non-Nordic or non-British Isles stock coming in. I do not know Asia, but similar places.
Shit. I somehow managed to forget that the cultures around the Med actually go back quite a few thousand years. Instead of popping out of nowhere and going for a pillage and plunder session a mere thousand years ago.
Which leaves Finland, which has about 10% Finnish Swedes, a Sami population and then some more recent immigrants.
Guess that leaves some small island-nation in the Pacific?
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/49 "2008-10-30T18:04:48Z")
> [@PopeJewish](#):
>
> Second, the majority of the Japanese and Korean populations are genetically similar, and descended from, the Han Chinese. In fact the first emperor of Japan, around 400 AD (not the mythical Himiko or whomever, obviously) was cousin of the emperor of one of the three kingdoms that became Korea.
The connection between Koreans and Japanese are fairly well established, but I’ve never read that they’re related to the Han Chinese. The typical conjecture is that Koreans are most closely related to Manchu or Mongols.
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### Author:  [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/50 "2008-10-30T20:22:36Z")
> [@Giles](#):
>
> Well, if you group all black Africans as one “race” (as you might from a US perspective), that’s going to give you a different answer for many African countries than if you distinguish major groups among them. In addition, those people might distinguish each other by language or religion, rather than by race, just as Hispanics are distinguished by language in the US, but often called a “race”.
For Africa it’d be probably helpful to consider a tribe or a clan. Like Somalia seems like “everyone’s a Somali” which is close to being true, but there are so man different clans, the idea of Somalis being one easily breaks down.
I read Gabon is one African countries with the least different numbers of ethnic tribes
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2008, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/51 "2008-11-02T09:42:33Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#):
>
> In 2001, Scotland was almost 98% white according to census figures.
But they’re hardly homogenous white people. I mean you’ve got the Anglo-Saxon lowlanders, the old Gaelic highlanders, the descendants of modern Irish immigrants (=Gaelic/Viking/Anglo-Norman), the Norse, whoever the Picts were, the French (my own surname has the appearance of being French in origin, but the family was in Scotland at least as far back as the mid-17th century) plus whoever else might have immigrated in more recent times.
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2008, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/52 "2008-11-05T17:55:12Z")
> [@ruadh](#):
>
> But they’re hardly homogenous white people. I mean you’ve got the Anglo-Saxon lowlanders, the old Gaelic highlanders, the descendants of modern Irish immigrants (=Gaelic/Viking/Anglo-Norman), the Norse, whoever the Picts were, the French (my own surname has the appearance of being French in origin, but the family was in Scotland at least as far back as the mid-17th century) plus whoever else might have immigrated in more recent times.
You are absolutely correct. There is also a significant Italian population in Scotland (and Ireland). But if we split ethnicities like this surely every country has this polyethnic background even amongst soi-disant racial monocultures?
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2008, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-racially-homogenous-country-in-the-world/470068/53 "2008-11-06T19:45:47Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> Ethnolinguistic breakdowns, on the other hand, are meaningful – if the Thai and the Lao see a clear difference between each other, that counts, even if Joe from Bug Tussle would lump them together.
What, you think it’s purely a question of Thai versus Lao? (And there are more ethnic Lao in northestern Thailand than in all of Laos.) There are SO many subdivisions. My friend in Roi Et, a fellow American farang (Westerner) can speak several local sub-dialects.
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