Is it me, or is America a tad more racist than the rest of us?

Oh man. I feel rude not attending to your post due to the time and effort you obviously put into it, but Finn dAbuzz has kind of got it nailed here "Obviously he was just engaging in casual musing (with perhaps a bit of America Bashing in mind). " (Now where is the goddam quote button around here?).

I don't have any evidence to back my claim up. I was just making a generalized statement from what I've been seeing.

I can assure you I don't put that much thought into making my titles subtley condescending and hate-evoking. I spent about a second inventing my title. And it was more irony than sarcasm.

All I can say is that extreme cases of racism spurred violence might not be an accurate measure of racism in a country (although I'm not saying I've got a better one). I'm not sure that the levels of extreme racism in a handful of individuals and moderate societal racism are directly proportional.

Once again, I apologise, but I wasn't and am not prepared to debate this at such a high level.

Shocked!

You keep on inviting piling on.

Well it was either that or ignore his post, which would have been even ruder and invited even more piling on.

These kinds of things are hard to quantify objectively, so I'm just going to talk about my personal experiences in regard to race and countries.

America is the most race-obsessed nation I have any experience with. That isn't to say that America is the most racist, just the most annoyingly obsessed with race. Nowhere else in the world have I been asked about race when filling out forms and those are everywhere in the US.

But it's certainly not the most racist, a lot of the obsession stems from anti-racists in addition to racists. In my personal experience South Africa would top that list (of most racist). I've lived with a number of South Africans and knew many of them, and still haven't met a single South African who didn't wear his racism on his sleeve and reminisce with nostalgia about violence they committed against blacks or rant about any atrocity they can attribute to blacks. There are only a few South Africans I've met who didn't go out of their way to make sure I knew about the baby raping cure for AIDS stories, the crime stories and anything negative in their efforts to portray blacks as primitive.

I'm sure my personal experience can't be generalized to all South Africans but that's what it's been so far.

Next on my list are Israelis and mid-east Arabs. I don't have as much personal experience with them as I do with South Africans but it never seemed to take long for any of the ones I did meet to display their racist feelings for each other.

After that, on my personal experience list is Australia where white supremacy seemed more common than anywhere else I've been, where the relationship with the aboriginal people is so poor, and where disdain for all their neighboring Asian countries seemed so prevalent.

Japan is next on my list, and their racism is very different from all the above nations I mention. It's not hatred, it's an elitism. They don't hate other races, but put so much value in their customs and traditions that they tend to discriminate based on race more than anywhere I know. I'm not sure if it's any better that they aren't as hateful about it given that the institutional racism is much more prevalent than the more polarized countries with the race haters and the racist haters.

So in short, I find America's obsession with race inordinate and yes it's home to a lot of racial hatred, but racism is less prevalent in America than any other country I have been to and the countries like Japan that don't generate a lot of race friction headlines have a lot more racial discrimination.

If you are looking for objective metrics, one you might use is inter-racial marriage. From memory I believe Japan tops that list as the country with the least inter-racial marriage.

All right, all right. For me, sarcasm almost precedes conscious thought, and would take no time at all to conjure.

Cheers.

Jesus Christ . . . "racism we would (almost) never get here"? You must live in a rosy pink world of happy bunnies and smiley faces everywhere. Why not spend quite a bit of your time talking to Maoris to find out how they perceive racism in your country?

I was wondering about the selfsame thing: back in the first Reagan administration I had a business collaboration with the late Robert Muldoon. Great man, brilliant, was PM of NZ at the time. His main preoccupation was uniting his country to Australia in order to prevent a Maori majority from arising - they breed like bunnies, apparently, or they did at the time this discussion took place.

Huh. I honestly don't know whether you are joking or not, because that really does sound quite ridiculous.

Ok, ok, New Zealand is not "a rosy pink world of happy bunnies and smiley faces everywhere", but IM MY OPINION I don't THINK that if a maori ran for PM there would be MUCH opposition (to a maori running for PM).

Check your facts, APerson - this cannot possibly have been a secret plan!

"But it's certainly not the most racist, a lot of the obsession stems from anti-racists in addition to racists. In my personal experience South Africa would top that list (of most racist). I've lived with a number of South Africans and knew many of them, and still haven't met a single South African who didn't wear his racism on his sleeve and reminisce with nostalgia about violence they committed against blacks or rant about any atrocity they can attribute to blacks. There are only a few South Africans I've met who didn't go out of their way to make sure I knew about the baby raping cure for AIDS stories, the crime stories and anything negative in their efforts to portray blacks as primitive."

How dare you?? My entire family and most of their family friends are South African, and the vast majority of them are very nice people, not racist at all. I have never heard a single racist word being uttered from any of their mouths. Never. Do you think that maybe because I'm young they wouldn't talk to me about it? I have lived with my parents for my entire life and never have I heard them talking to eachother or talking to anyone else about "violence they comitted against blacks" or "atrocity they can attribute to blacks". Have you ever been to South Africa? Do you have any idea what it is like there?? Some parts of cities you (if you're white) can't even go to in broad daylight. it's so dangerous. Now of course, I'm not saying that blacks are responsible for their own socio-economic status and hence their need to resort to crime to make a living for their family, but all the violence commited by black people against whites could extremely easily stir up hatred that maybe wasn't even previously there. And yet, despite this I have never, ever seen an ounce of racism from any of the South Africans I know. And I can tell you right now, I know a hell of a lot more South Africans than you do. And if they tell you about crime that might make blacks seem primitive, they're not lying. It happens. Anyway, increasingly in South Africa are whites and blacks becoming friends, my relatives included.

Maybe next time you should think before making wild accusations about an entire country.

Can't find anything about it on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Muldoon

APerson - if Wikipedia is the only fount of knowledge you're aware of, good luck to you: you'll need it.

As to the South African situation, I did spend a month there on business just before they had to hand over power to the blacks. Not a single dinner party I attended missed the joke "this is our last white Christmas".

Educate yourself, then - if you must - fly into diatribes against posters in actual possession of facts.

Googling "Robert Muldoon maori" doesn't come up with anything either.

I generally find that wiki has most of the relevent information on it. If there was something about Robert Muldoon wanting to stop the maoris uprising, I'm sure it would have it. If you can find anything, let me know.

And I'm sure that one single joke is a more accurate representation of South Africa than my experience.

No, I suspect that they just aren't racist like the South Africans I know.



Are you trying to be ironic?

Exactly how many South Africans do you know, and how much are you exaggerating what they say?

And I said there was a greater degree of societal racism in America than New Zealand. I didn't accuse the entire white population of being violent, cruel, bitter white supremicists.

Probably between 30 and 50. I'm not exaggerating what they say, every last one of them expressed racist sentiments very openly to me.



I didn't accuse the entire white population of anywhere of being racist (I even said "I'm sure my personal experience can't be generalized to all South Africans but that's what it's been so far"). I said that in my personal experience every South African I spoke with was racist and that I think South Africa has the most such racism of any country on earth.

You shouldn't be so sensitive to opinions about degrees of racism in South Africa if you are going to assert that America is more racist.

Obviously our personal experiences, as told, differ vastly.

Will u tell us your personal experiences with racism ?

I 'd tell u my personal experiences, but to tell u the truth,
I don 't remember any, offhand.





David

What "Maori uprising"?? Your problems seem to start with reading comprehension. Since you obviously cannot grasp with any success on your first try what others here are writing, re-read until you understand. Bye.