The 25 Most Racist Countries
And we're not on it!
Yeeeeeaaahhh!!
Also: so much for that lefty "only white people are racist" BS...
(Though...does India have a Klan?)
(Though...does India have a Klan?)
posted by Winston Smith at
7:25 PM
4 Comments:
In most of the countries referenced, "race" clearly means something like caste, religion, or (to an American) sub-racial ethnic group. Heck, the only countries on that list that are likely to mean by "race" what an American means by "race" are South Africa and Russia, and the South African respondents likely include many that are Zulu chauvinists and the like. Most of the countries on that list, notably, are either Muslim countries with substantial non-Muslim/non-Sunni Muslim minorities or are non-Muslim countries with substantial Muslim minorities. All U! S! A! Not! That! Bad! aside, it's interesting to see a reminder that Western-style racism is not its own unique creature, but a mutant offspring of broadly old-world Sectarianism.
I have an old British edition of "The Once and Future King", the flyleaf of which promises that the story "throws light upon the race question." They meant the English vs. the Irish, it turns out. (Great book, by the way, even better than you remember.)
I've thought I should go back and read that book--it's one of a few books that I liked so much when I was younger that I never allowed myself to read it again...
But doesn't your point depend on them having used a mistranslation of 'race'? I mean, if you say, roughly: "people in that non-English-speaking country don't mean what we mean by 'race,'" that seems to assume that the pollsters used incompetent translators / translations, doesn't it? (Barring some miracle or adoption of the English word, presumably Indians don't use the word 'race' itself.) I mean...either they asked Indians about *race* or they didn't (or they asked something unclear or borderline). So if Indians have the concept *race*--which I'm sure they do--along with some other concepts (just like us) of e.g. religion or class...then these guys really botched it if they asked about one of the latter rather than the former...
Also, I think the English and the Irish *are* sort of / plausibly different races. Since by 'race' we have come to mean, basically, only the most course-grained divisions (Asian, black, white, American Indian, whatevs), we don't think of the clusters down to such fine-grained levels...but there are some rough, identifiable differences between English, and Irish, no?
I don't want to get swayed by the allure of not being among the top/bottom-25...but I'm skeptical.
Oh, definitely re-read The Once and Future King; it not only holds up, it improves on reading as an adult. TO&FK is a great adult book that kids can profitably read, not a great kids book that can be profitably read by adults. I think you have to have some years of adult life to really appreciate the full tragedy of King Arthur, the pathos of Sir Lancelot, or the terror inherent in "Everything Not Compulsory Forbidden". The book is also very dense with early 20th century British cultural references, and having Wikipedia in your pocket is a great enhancement unavailable when we were kids.
But, anyway, on to realism vs. nominalism on race concepts. I have a good feeling we're for real going to figure it out this time!
No, I don't think we're dealing with a translation issue. Anyone living on planet Earth with enough connection to it to be polled is familiar with American, census-form-coarseness race concepts. Whatever word they use for the polling in, say, Hindi, I'm sure means roughly what "race" means in English. However, they are also familiar with finer-grained race distinctions, race distinctions that are salient to life in their countries because they coincide with other distinctions that matter: differences of religion, caste, tribe, language, history, class, etc., etc. If you poll someone in Delhi about whether he would mind if someone of a different race moved next door, he's not going to think for a moment that you mean either Archie Bunker or George Jefferson. He's going to be thinking of the somewhat lighter person with the barely bigger nose, who is likely to be Muslim, or the somewhat darker man with the slightly kinkier hair, who likely speaks Tamil. If the difference between the English and the Irish are a race difference, then these differences are. And these are the differences that are relevant to life in the countries that top this list, not the differences captured by the US census form.
Above the PC/popomo muddying of the waters, there is a good reason, I think, that nominalism vs. realism on a concept like race is so contentious. Race distinctions - the barebones distinctions of inheritable phenotype - are a real, ubiquitous feature of human populations. Any child can spot the difference between a black person and a white one, and children reliably do so. So, realism, yes. In Western Europe, any child can reliably spot the difference between a Dutchman and a Spaniard, so realism here too. Children in Brazil, I'm sure, can spot racial distinctions between people that you and I would take considerable training to reliably make. Only some of these real distinctions are salient to people's lives, only some of them do they care about, and those are the real distinctions that coincide with distinctions born of convention, ideology, and contingent historical events. The rigidification of that coincidence and the steady piling up of thick ethical concepts atop the simple real distinction, that's what's susceptible to a historical and sociological analysis, not the original distinction itself.
Ok, you sold me on re-reading TOAFK.
I'm still skeptical about the race point you make early on, though--the translation point.
You write:
"I don't think we're dealing with a translation issue. Anyone living on planet Earth with enough connection to it to be polled is familiar with American, census-form-coarseness race concepts. Whatever word they use for the polling in, say, Hindi, I'm sure means roughly what "race" means in English. However, they are also familiar with finer-grained race distinctions, race distinctions that are salient to life in their countries because they coincide with other distinctions that matter: differences of religion, caste, tribe, language, history, class, etc., etc. If you poll someone in Delhi about whether he would mind if someone of a different race moved next door, he's not going to think for a moment that you mean either Archie Bunker or George Jefferson. He's going to be thinking of the somewhat lighter person with the barely bigger nose, who is likely to be Muslim, or..."
Hm...wait, maybe I'm *not* so skeptical... So your point is that they really did ask about race, but race tends to go along with e.g. religious differences in, say, India...so that's a confounding factor?
Well, that *could* be...but is something similar likely to be true in all the other 24 countries as well? Or, say, 15 of them? We can't be the only country where race and such other factors are separate.
I'm probably missing something here.
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