Where's the most racist/xenophobic area in your country? In the world?

Great Debates
21

To try to put some hard figures on this.

According to the FBI there are ~8, 400 hate crimes committed. Let’s assume that the population of criminal racists in the Black and White populations are equal. With 8, 400 crimes committed we would expect 6,300 of those charged with hate crimes would be White, and about 1, 000 of those charged to be Black with the remainder committed by other minorities. Instead the figures show that only 5, 000 are White and over 2, 000 are black. IOW on a per capita basis there are ~4 times as many criminal racists in Black communities than in White communities.

There are ~1, 200 anti-white hate crimes committed for every ~3, 000 anti Black. Or to put it another way, crimes against Whites make up about 71% of the hate crimes committed in the US. That might seem to suggest that the rate is actually based on random chance, however we need to bear in mind that 7% of the population are incapable of committing anti-white hate crimes because they are white. IOW the effective rate of hate crimes against whites is four times that committed against blacks, which again backs up the figures on perpetrators of hate crimes.

So there are the hard figures. Minorities are much more likely to be criminally racist individuals. Of course this doesn’t address which areas are most racist, but if we assume that racists are spread evenly across the population or, more likely, are in higher numbers in mono-cultural communities, then we would have to say that the most racist areas are those populated by minorities.

22

No, there’s a definite hierarchy depending on where you’re from. Whites have the easiest time of it, and I’d say that other Asians have the worst.

Nikkei have a hard time back in Japan because they’re not cut any slack whatsoever. They’re expected to accept and live up to all the cultural and social expectations that any other Japanese would. If you don’t, it’s not because you’re from a different culture, it’s because there’s something wrong with you.

23

More recent figures:

Blacks make up 12% of the US population. Blacks commit 19% of race hate crimes.

Whites make up 75% of the US population. Whites commit 62% of race hate crimes.

So which group has the greater proportion of criminal racists? Given two communities of the same size, which will have the greater number of criminal racists?

It’s going to be impossible to find a factual answer to this question, but based on the actual data presented to date, the most racist communities are indeed minority, especially Black, communities.

24

Blake:

For starters, I would like to know how those hate crime statistics are collected. For example, if a black robber singles out a hite victim under the assumption that he will have more money, does saying “white mother fucker” make it a hate crime? I have been mugged three times on the south side of chicago, because I look white and like i would have money while coming home late at night. I can assure you that the reason they robbed me were because they are poor and assumed i had money, not out of racial hatred.

If you wanted to be at all fair in comparing your hate crimes you would have to control for income…also, how about comparing some statistics on other forms of racism I guarantee blacks are more a victim of? For example that I have seen in the work place, white people “have a bad day” but black people “have n attitude” or a chip on their shoulder…and i guarantee you more black people are victims per capita of police brutality…why are you singling one kind of racism out to support your preconceived notion?

The question is unanswerable, but worth discussing imo.

25

Very good point. I’m white and I’ve only experienced racism directed towards me twice in my life, first time was when I was walking through an Asian (pakistani) neighbourhood in my home town.
Second time was recently in the town where I currently reside, I was told to “fuck off back to Poland” by a white kid who I presume was just as English as me.

I’ve never been to Poland in my entire life.:confused:

26

Burakumin are a minority group in Japan. They are full Japanese, but still ostracized and do face a lot of prejudice.

according to wiki:

“The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered “tainted” with death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers, workers in slaughterhouses, butchers or tanners), and traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos.”

27

Andrew Young, who was the US ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter and later Mayor of Atlanta, once said the Russians are the the most racist people in the world, followed closely by the Japanese.

28

Really? They told you this did they? Or did you read their minds?

How exactly did you look like you would have money, beyond being white? Did you, for example, walk a black man dressed exactly the same way past them to test your hypothesis?

Since you are able to assure me on this point you must be able to give me the facts that lead you to be able to make this assurance.

Well that’s fine, give me the data that controls for this. because the only actual data we have to date says that Blacks neighbourhoods are going to be the most racist.

OK, let’s see you evidence for this claim then, since you can guarantee it. Because in my experience exactly the opposite is true. White people bend over backwards to excuse any sort of behaviour from minorities that they would never dream of tolerating from other whites.

Yes, of course. That is certain simply because more Blacks per capita commit crimes. Police don’t often randomly pull people over to brutalise them. All incidences I have ever heard of in my lifetime involved police brutalising people they were already interacting with.

I do have my doubts that Black police victimisation rates are inconsistent with Black crime rates. IOW if 20% of Blacks per capita commit crimes and only 2% of Whites, then I suspect that 2% of brutality cases will involve whites and 20% Blacks. Again, this is just my intuition,and if you have any actual facts then please bring them.

Because those are the only facts that we have. What do you want to do, just ignore it because it doesn’t suit your pre-concieved notions?

To me the result is is perfectly consistent with both experience and logic. Racism has a tight negative correlation with both income and education across the nation and around the world. Since US Blacks are the least educated and poorest major segment of the community it would actually be astounding if they weren’t also the most racist segment. Something truly bizarre would need to be occurring for that not to be true. When you factor in that most educated and wealthy Blacks promptly leave Black neighbourhoods it would be almost magical if Black neighbourhoods managed to be less racist than white neighbourhoods.
If you have any other facts at all that might indicate which neighbourhoods are most racist then please share them. But the only actual facts we have indicate that Black neighbourhoods are the most racist.

I don’t think it’s unanswerable, we just don’t have the data we need to answer it. The hate crimes data is a starting point. Somewhere data exists on which actual neighbourhoods the crimes are committed in, the relative wealth of attackers and victims etc.

29

I’m wondering about this thread being in Great Debates. I’m still relatively new here, so am perhaps misunderstanding the intent of the different fora.

Can this question really be answered factually? Is that what we are attempting to do here? Many responses are anecdotal, based on some personal experience, or are responses given by someone else. It seems to me that these answers, limited as they are, would be subjective opinion at best, racist themselves at worst.

Are the folks offering a straightforward view offering this as fact? Or are we all in agreement that the responses/opinions here are merely points on the graph?

xtisme, I understand completely the phenomenon you’re talking about, and your friend gets my empathy. It’s just that I’m not comfortable with one friend’s experience and extrapolating that into a sweeping underlying current of dislike for anyone not Japanese. While I have nothing to offer but anecdotal evidence myself, that current doesn’t apply to everyone here.

If I’m taking this all to literally, please let me know! thanks.

30

  • If it could be answered factually, it would be for GQ, not GD. Since it is unlikely to be answered factually (we can pull up stats on hate crime, but they’ll be compiled in different ways in different locations, and it’s highly likely that the most-phobic places don’t give a fig about hate crime because the hate is considered normal - where women are viewed as chattel, who compiles stats on how many spouses beat up their other halves?), it doesn’t quite belong in GQ.

  • It’s way too serious for IMHO, doesn’t belong in specialized fora like Cafe Society or The Game Room, and having it here sort of sends a message of “please keep things civil”. That doesn’t mean it won’t end up in the Pit if people start throwing breakable objects.

Did that help?

31

“Moderate”. Well, that’s one way of putting it :smiley: Half my family hails from there yet I have also been on the receiving end due to my accent. I’ve also been on the receiving end of Irish anti-English racism, which was in a weird way amusing as my Mother’s side of the family eventually is Northern Irish Catholic, so it was my ancestors that were getting the shit from the English and/or British in the first place.

32

Yes, it did. Thank you!

33

None of them said anything racist to me. Let me break it down for you since what I think is glaringly obvious to me is going over your head:

I have read Chicago is one of the most racially segregated major cities in America, and I have no reason to not believe this. In my poor neighborhood when I lived there, it was extremely unusual to see a white person, ESPECIALLY after dark.

Now try to stay with me. If you’re in an extremely poor neighborhood, and you are looking for someone to mug, do you go for black person who almost assuredly lives there and is poor too, or do you go for the white person who almost assuredly DOESN’T live there, and at least has a chance of having some money on them? That racial profiling isn’t racist, it is trying to get bang for your mugging buck.

Hopefully my above response answered this point for you.

Do you have information for how all of this data was gathered? For example, I bet you someone saying “White motherfucker!” during a mugging would make it classified as a hate crime, when in reality a successful mugging relies on fear, and making someone afraid of you <> you hate them because you hate their race.

I have to say as a mulatto who looks almost completely white, I can assure you there are more benefits to looking white than there are to looking black. You might fare better in a crappy black ghetto with black skin, but you will fare better when dealing with the criminal justice system looking white.

My stance is that street violence is a horrible metric for overall racism. And that, it is unanswerable because there are no ways to gather statistics to paint the whole picture.

Will we ever know how many managers hired a white person over a black person because they assume black people are never on time? Or black folk starting with two strikes already when dealing with police and being a young male? Or little old ladies clutching their purses in an elevator when a black man enters? It’s silly for you to even pretend to know the truth. You have a notion, so you’re digging through data and found some, street crime, which you extrapolated to be the indicator for all forms of racism, thus blacks are more racist than whites. :dubious:

We DO have statistics for that paint racism in the exact opposite way you are proposing, such as in racial disparities in sentencing in the criminal justice system, the war on drugs, etc.

34

I used one friends experience simply to illustrate one of the points I was trying to make. As far as I know, there are no charts or graphs showing relative racism or xenophobia among nations. I’ve traveled fairly extensively, however, and when I was younger I was in Japan pretty regularly, as well as in other Asian nations, so my IMPRESSION (which is what the OP was asking for) is that, of all the nations I’ve traveled to (or lived in), Japan strikes me as the most racist. I didn’t really get into the xenophobic aspect, but I’d say that Afghanistan is probably high on the list there, though Japan is still in the running.

These are simply my own observations, however, and can be taken with a grain of salt or even dismissed if you like. From your user name I expect that you are from Japan? What’s your thoughts on most racist/xenophobic country in the world?

-XT

35

It’s not on the levels of Russia or Japan, but there is rising (although, rather undercover) xenophobia in China, especially toward Africans.

36

According to this Time article, Jamaica is the most homophobic place on earth.

37

I’ve never been to the mainland (just Hong Kong before the Chinese re-took possession), but I thought this was always the case (not just American’s but all ‘western devils’). For that matter, the Chinese also seem to have a healthy dose of racism and xenophobia (IIRC, don’t they call Japanese ‘eastern devils’ or something like that), including just about all other Asians.

China was actually going to be my second choice, after Japan. I’ve been to Russia, and while they also don’t lack for racism and xenophobia, if you walk the streets of most large Russian cities you get a much more cosmopolitan cross section of ‘race’, and, at least to my outsiders perspective at least minimally more tolerance.

-XT

38

I had no idea that Japan still had this reputation. The idea of ‘kokutai’ and the national spirit/pride was obvious a massive part of thinking in decades past (much to the detriment to rest of East Asia and several western powers), but I wouldn’t have imagined that the pride still present manifests itself still in a contempt for ‘gaijin’ - even the word itself is confusing wiki says that sometimes it’s considered a fairly neutral word, other cites saying it’s and offensive term.

Japan has always had a highly stratified social structure though, so it’s not surprising that this…inherent division accepted in the culture can have hostile turns.

39

Rwanda.
I’m unconvinced the Tutsis and Hutus have all settled down for good.

40

I’ve experienced a great deal of racism in China, from my college president refusing to shake hands with a black foreign teacher to an anthropology forum held in my school pushing the idea that Chinese people have evolved from a different ancestor than the rest of the world. When visiting Tibet, I was told by my students “You should not touch anyone while you are there. They only bathe once a year and they all carry knives.” My friend told me openly that she would not sit next to a Uighur on a bus because they are thieves. I spent a lot of time listening to people discuss their theories on the brain capacities of black people and the sexual prowess of white people. Few men would consider an interracial marriage, especially to a black person. Of course, I was in a small city, so my experiences may not be true for larger, more cosmopolitan cities. My anecdotes may not give a complete picture, but they do represent things I saw on a regular basis.

In my experience the racism in China goes beyond simple prejudice or nationalism (though there are healthy doses of both.) The racism I saw seemed deeply rooted in the idea that there are very large and real differences between the races and that people of Chinese ancestry are inherently superior in a number of ways.