The message that gets drummed into our heads day after day (by certain people who make quite a good living at it) is that we are a deeply racist culture.
But what is that belief based upon? Twentieth-Century history? Anecdotal evidence? Specific stories by individual people? University Profs who use victim-hood arguments to secure themselves a particular status among their peers?
A better question might be, “is that true of us — Today”?
According to this study, maybe not.
The World Values Survey has asked a series of questions globally for years. Swedish economists selected one question from that survey to give an indicator of racial tolerance. The question was who would you NOT want as neighbors. One of the available answers was “people of another race”.
The results from those answers were used to create a color-coded map to indicate most and least racially tolerant countries worldwide.
As it turns out, the English-speaking world rates among the MOST tolerant countries.
I will provide links to 3 different sources for this story, because they highlight different aspects of this study.
1) Dailymail edition gives an at-a-glance list of most/least tolerant countries by this study.
2) Washington Post source gives a history and some of the breakdown and a dissenting view.
3) Washington Post has a Professor from Carleton University (Ottawa) who comments on some of the study’s strengths and weaknesses.
