There is an actual debate here. Not sure what protocol is but I thought I would start a new thread without all the lame humour and shite in the other thread.
My two nominations go to New Zealand and Australia.
Australia???
Apart from the whole Aboriginal issue, you need only look back to the Cronulla Riots of 2005 to see how divided parts of Australian society are in racial terms.
I did not say there was no racism.
There have been riots in most countries.
I would have put Australia down as a country with the most amount of racism, actually!
It constantly amazes me that the way the media report around the world that anyone can get this impression.
I live in an ‘average’ suburb of Melbourne. My wife is Cambodian. My neighbours along this street are Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian,Sri Lankan, Lebanese, Burmese etc etc. The school up the road has apparently kids from over 100 ethnic groups. There are no big race problems day-to-day.
Germans could never be racist.
Having lived in both Australia and the US, I should be in a position to compare racism in the two countries, but it’s really not that easy.
Part of the problem is that many Australians are very open in expressing their racism, while I suspect that racist Americans have learned to shut up about it.
Another part is that the Australian group which is most discriminated against is relatively small. A lot of white Australians have very little contact with Aboriginal Australians. Note that blinkingblinking mentioned a whole lot of immigrant groups – who do have their problems, it’s true – but didn’t mention Aboriginal people. There would, in fact, be very few of them in the average Melbourne suburb.
And, of course, racism goes in all directions. The worst racist abuse that I ever heard was from an Aboriginal person directed to some guy from Asia in Sydney’s Chinatown, for no apparent reason that I could see.
I’ve done a bit of searching and the closest I can find to an objective measurement of this (actually the only thing that I can find that offers anything objective) is a series of surveys done by the World Values Survey in various countries between 1999 and 2003. They asked the question “Who would you least like to have as a neighbour” and gave various options including “person of a different race”, “homosexual”, “alchoholic”, “Muslim” and “Jew” amongst others.
According to this (at least in the early part of this millenium) Sweden is the least racist country, with only 2.5% of respondents mentioning “person of a different race”, followed by Iceland, Canada and West Germany. The worst is Bangladesh, with 71.7% mentioning it, followed by India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Republic of Korea.
South Africa comes in at 49 out of 60 with 23.6%, Great Britain at 18 with 8.6%, Australia, New Zealand and the USA are not included. The highest “western” country is Italy, with 15.6% at position 37.
The blog that I found this data through has a nice little graphic at the bottom of the page where you can see some of the rankings (of “western” countries only) for some of the other categories of response.
So there you go, some stats to muddy the waters…
Grim
I will give a definition of racism that I got from somewhere- Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.
Many people see racism as meaning only racial violence. That seems to be the major problem with these threads-this misunderstanding
Right, so when Aussies talk about “lazy wogs” or “layabout Abos” that’s exactly the sentiment they are expressing.
Note that it’s not necessarily whites who are most racist… in the UK the most recent race riots have been between Asians and Black Caribbeans.
There are a lot of people from the former Yugoslav republics in Oz… reading some of their message boards you will see that they express a v. firm belief in the inherent weakness of their former countrymen.
The countries with least racism will be those with the least racially diverse population - it’s hard to oppose something you’ve no experience of, which is why Iceland and Sweden are so harmonious.
The UK, Australia and America are all nations built on immigration - so while there’s integration, there’s also lots more opportunity for racist opinions to develop.
Not sure what your first point is.
First thing I came to from Google about racism and Iceland was Polish immigration causes Icelander xenophobia
I see what Wallenstein is saying, but a non-diverse country can be pretty racist too. Take Korea.
Or, actually, hmm… maybe the most racist are countries which aren’t diverse in the large sense (ie mixing black and white ppl) but in a narrower sense (like koreans vs chinese/japanese, india with all its different subpopulations, those former yugoslav citizens). But then… it really becomes not so much racism as xenophobia. Ie, a matter of nationality. Or is that ethnicity?
Er… I dunno. Anyway, I have this nagging suspicion that racism as we understand it in America is something we invented here in America.
The US did not invent racism. However, the “peculiar institution” of slavery historically explains a lot about how racism developed in its own unique way in the US.
How so versus other countries at the time that also had slaves?
I always took that “peculiar institution” comment to mean that it was at odds with what America’s ideals as a nation were founded on and that people over time disagreed with it’s practice.
Come live up north and you may get a better idea about the racism in this country. As already mentioned, you have failed to mention Aboriginals who are, IMO, the most downtrodden, marginalised group here. They are so marginalised that you didn’t think to mention them despite the fact they’ve been in this country for what? 40,000 years or something?
Giles has a good point when he says that many Australians are not afraid to voice their racism, this may make the country seem worse than it is, and I acknowledge that that may bias my own views on Australians!
There is another thread in IMHO or MPSIMS about what ex-pats dislike most about their adopted country. My biggest gripe about Australia is that so many of my friends who are otherwise great people, have no problem referring to Abos, or Coons, etc*. I often hear a town called Carnarvon referred to as “Coonhaven,” this is a rough equivalent to “Niggerville”, although “coon” doesn’t have anything like the baggage that “nigger” does. Other than that it’s a lovely place, though it could do with some elevation variation in some parts (Australia that is, not Carnarvon.)
New Zealand is quite different. NZers are, in my experience, much less likely to make any racist comments in public. Also the Maori have much more in common culturally with white NZers than the Aboriginals do with white Australians. The result of this seems to be that the Maori and Pakeha cultures have merged much more successfully, despite the war and various other troubles, than what has happened in Australia. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the Aboriginal culture had remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years until the arrival of European settlers. In comparison the Maori had been busy branching out and settling new lands themselves.
In summary. I can’t say whether or not NZ and/or Australia are the least racist countries in the world because I haven’t had anything to do with other countries. Whatever the case, both countries have a long way to go and I don’t think anyone can afford to sit back and think they have racial problems sorted.
*My second biggest gripe is that I find it hard not to feel the same way about Aboriginals myself, when the most visible segment of a group of people are drunk, foul-mouthed, and smelly, it is very difficult to maintain the mindset that not all of these people are drunk, foul-mouthed and smelly.
Why do you assume my thinking comes from the media? My eldest brother lived in Sydney for 12 years, my middle brother has lived in Darwin for 15 years. My parents take annual trips over to Australia to spend time with my brother and his family in Darwin. I myself have been over there many times. My first trip as a teenager really opened my eyes when I saw the attitude displayed towards Aborigines as compared to the attitude displayed towards Maori in my home country.
I agree that many Australian people are racist concerning Aboriginal people. What people outside of Australia may not realise is that the chance of actually encountering an Aboriginal person in most of the cities is close to zero. When
I lived in Auckland one of my housemates was Aboriginal. In Melbourne I have seen Aboriginal people playing football and occasionally begging on Swanston Street. I went to Latrobe University for a year. I met the only Aboriginal guy who was attending the University while I was there. The university had about 20000 students at the time.
It is easy for people to be racist about a race of people that they only see begging or playing football.
It is not easy often to stop oneself being prejudice in many circumstances.
I’m confused - you agree that Australians are rascist, yet stand by your original comment that they are the least rascist in the world?
*
Edited for dreadful spelling!*
I abide by my OP. I nominate NZ and Australia.
I have travelled to 26 countries and stayed in NZ ( 25 years), Australia( 10 years), Cambodia ( 6 months), Japan ( 2 years), South Korea (one month), UK( 6 weeks), Italy( 5 months) and France( 5 weeks).
I do not know the answer. That is why the OP is a question.
In my experience I would say that Australia is the 2nd least racist country in the world.
Iceland has had ongoing problems with the workers from the Slavic countries. (Let’s not confuse race and ethnicity here, both groups are Caucasians.) Apparently they’ve brought in a lot of drugs and associated petty theft crime and violence with them. Icelanders are more nationalistic than racist, requiring that immigrants attempt to assimilate into the culture rather than forming enclaves. They have a strong program in place encouraging the Icelandic language,(which is the official one of the country) and culture. My impression is that they are a bit more suspicious of foreigners than natives; but it isn’t entirely unjustified as those groups are almost always the troublemakers. Most of the natives tend to be fairly law abiding people outside of minor things like the occasional drunken brawl.