Among the dozens of questions asked by World Values, Swedish economists found one that they think could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance toward other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify the types of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, when choosing from a list, chose “people of a different race.” According to economists, the more often people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors of other races, the less racially tolerant that society could be called. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it appeared to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)
Unfortunately, the Swedish economists did not include all the data from the World Values Survey in their study. final research paper. So I returned to The source, compiled the original data and mapped it onto the infographic above. In bluer countries, fewer people said they would not want to have neighbors of a different race; in red countries, more people did it.
If we treat this data as indicative of racial tolerance, then we might conclude that people in bluer countries are least likely to express racist attitudes, while people in red countries are most likely to express attitudes racists.
Compare the results to this map of the most and least diverse countries in the world.
Before diving into the data, a few caveats. First, it is entirely likely that some people lied when answering this question; it would be surprising if they didn’t. But the key, unanswered question is whether people in certain countries were more or less likely to answer the question honestly. For example, although the data suggests that Swedes are more racially tolerant than Finns, it is possible that both groups are equally tolerant but that Finns are simply more honest. The willingness to express such a preference out loud, however, could be an indicator of racial attitudes in itself. Second, the survey is not conducted every year; Some results are very recent and others are several years old. We therefore assume that the results are static, which may not be the case.
Here’s what the data shows:
• Most tolerant Anglo and Latin countries. Respondents were more likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its former Anglo-Saxon colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks down along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its proximity to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also achieved high results.
• India and Jordan are by far the least tolerant. In just two of the 81 countries surveyed, more than 40 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5 percent Indians and 51.4 percent Jordanians. (Note: World Values data for Bangladesh and Hong Kong appear to have been reversed, with in fact only 28.3 and 26.8 percent respectively indicating they would not want a neighbor of a different race . Please see the correction at the bottom of this article.)
• Wide and interesting variation across Europe. Immigration and national identity are important and sensitive issues in much of Europe, where racial characteristics are changing. Although one might expect the wealthier and more educated Western European countries to be more tolerant than those in Eastern Europe, this is not exactly the case. France emerges as one of the least racially tolerant countries on the continent, with 22.7% of respondents saying they do not want a neighbor of another race. Former Soviet states like Belarus and Latvia have proven more tolerant than most European countries. Many in the Balkans, perhaps after years of ethnically tinged wars, have expressed less racial tolerance.
• The Middle East is not so tolerant. Immigration is also a major problem in this region, particularly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which often absorb economic migrants from poorer neighbors.
• Racial tolerance is low in various Asian countries. Countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, where many racial groups often seeking influence and having complicated histories with each other, demonstrated greater skepticism toward diversity. This was also true, to a lesser extent, in China and Kyrgyzstan. Similar trends have been seen in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
• South Korea, which is not very tolerant, is an exception. Although the country is wealthy, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogeneous – all trends that seem to coincide with racial tolerance – more than one in three South Koreans say they do not want a neighbor of a different race. This might have to do with Korea’s particular view that its own racial and national identity is unique – studied by scholars such as BR Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and tensions from long-standing relationship between the nation and Japan.
• Pakistan, remarkably tolerant, is also an exception. Although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance – sectarian violence, geographic location in the least tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices – only 6.5 percent of Pakistanis support oppose a neighbor of a different race. This would seem to suggest that Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than Germans or Dutch.
Update: I heard one version of a question asked by an overwhelming number of readers: “I have met many Indians and Americans and found the former to be more racially tolerant than the latter.” How can these results be correct? I would suggest three possible explanations for this, any combination of which may or may not be true. First, India and the United States are both huge countries; anecdotal interactions are not representative of the whole, especially since people wealthy enough to travel abroad may be likely to encounter certain subsets of these respective populations more than others.
Second, the survey question asks about internal and personal preferences; what respondents want. A person’s experiences with Americans or Indians, in addition to being anecdotal, only tell you about their external behavior. These two ways of looking at racial attitudes may suggest something about racial tolerance, but they are different indicators that measure different things, which could help explain how one can contradict the other.
Third, the survey question is one way to judge racial tolerance but, like many social science indicators, it is indirect and imperfect. I cited the hypothesis regarding Swedes and Finns at the top of this article, noting that perhaps some people are simply more honest than others about their racial tolerance. It is entirely possible that we see some version of this effect in the US-India comparison; perhaps, for example, Americans are conditioned by their education and media to keep these kinds of racial preferences confidential, that is, to lie about them in surveys, in a way that Indians might not do it. This difference would be interesting in itself, but alas, there is no inquiry question for the sake of honesty.
Correction: This post originally stated that, according to the World Values Survey, 71.7 percent of Bangladeshis and 71.8 percent of Hong Kongers said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. In fact, these numbers appear to be significantly lower, 28.3 percent and 26.8 percent, respectively. In both cases, World Values appears to have mistakenly published incorrect data on its website. Ashirul Amin, who posts at the Tufts University Fletcher School Emerging Markets blog, looked at the Bangladesh data and discovered the error. My thanks to Amin, who is Bangladeshi and was able to read the original questionnaire, for pointing this out. Her the analysis is worth reading in its entiretybut here is his conclusion:
The short answer is yes, someone did big finger as long. “Yes” and “No” were reversed in the second round of the survey, meaning 28.3% of Bangladeshis said they would not want neighbors of a different race – up from 71.7%. .
26k likes on Facebook and 2.5k tweeters, take note.
Amin adds: “Bangladeshis are a tolerant group – it’s okay to come and visit them. » The error in the Hong Kong data, first discovered by Chinese users on Reddit, was reported by Engadget’s China editor Richard Lai. Ng Chun Hung, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and lead researcher of the World Values survey, confirmed by email that the data had been uploaded to the survey company’s website. He added that he had written to the World Values Survey team to alert them and ask them to remove the erroneous data. My thanks to him, as well as Lai and the Reddit users who dug through the original Chinese survey forms to demonstrate the error.