I DO NOT ACCEPT RACISM IN ANY WAY

What Is Racism?

What is racism, really? Today, the word is thrown around all the time by people of colour and whites alike. Use of the term “racism” has become so popular that it’s spun off related terms such as “reverse racism,” “horizontal racism” and “internalized racism.”

Defining Racism

Let’s start by examining the most basic definition of racism—the dictionary meaning. According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, racism has two meanings. Firstly, racism is, “The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.” Secondly, racism is, “Discrimination or prejudice based on race.”

Examples of the first definition abound. When slavery was practiced in the United States, blacks were not only considered inferior to whites but regarded as property instead of human beings. During the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, it was agreed that slaves were to be considered three-fifths people for purposes of taxation and representation.

Generally during slavery, blacks were deemed intellectually inferior to whites. This notion persists in modern-day America.

In 1994, a book called The Bell Curve posited that genetics were to blame for why African Americans traditionally score lower on intelligence tests than whites. The book was attacked by everyone from New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who argued that social factors were responsible for the differential, to Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that the authors made conclusions unsupported by scientific research. In 2007, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson ignited similar controversy when he suggested that blacks were less intelligent than whites.

Discrimination Today

Sadly, racism in the form of discrimination persists in society also. A case in point is that blacks have traditionally suffered from higher rates of unemployment than whites. Black unemployment is often nearly twice as high as the white unemployment rate. Do blacks simply not take the initiative that whites do to find work? Studies indicate that, in actuality, discrimination contributes to the black-white unemployment gap.

In 2003, researchers at the University of Chicago and MIT released a study involving 5,000 fake resumes that found that 10 percent of resumes featuring “Caucasian-sounding” names were called back compared to just 6.7 percent of resumes featuring “black-sounding” names. Moreover, resumes featuring names such as Tamika and Aisha were called back just 5 and 2 percent of the time. The skill level of the faux black candidates made no impact on call back rates.

Can Minorities Be Racist?

Because racial minorities in the U. S. have spent their lifetimes in a society that has traditionally valued whites over them, they are also likely to believe in the superiority of whites. It’s also worth noting that in response to living in a racially stratified society, people of colour sometimes complain about whites. Typically, such complaints serve as coping mechanisms to withstand racism rather than as anti-white bias. Even when minorities are actually prejudiced against whites, they lack the institutional power to adversely affect whites’ lives.

Internalise Racism and Horizontal Racism

Internalized racism is when a minority believes that whites are superior. A highly publicized example of this is a 1954 study involving black girls and dolls. When given the choice between a black doll and a white doll, the black girls disproportionately chose the latter. In 2005, a teen filmmaker conducted a similar study and found that 64 percent of the girls preferred the white dolls. The girls attributed physical traits associated with whites, such as straighter hair, with being more desirable than traits associated with blacks.

As for horizontal racism - this occurs when members of minority groups adopt racist attitudes towards other minority groups. An example of this would be if a Japanese American prejudged a Mexican American based on the racist stereotypes of Latinos found in mainstream culture.

Racism Myth: Segregation Was a Southern Issue

Contrary to popular belief, integration wasn’t universally accepted in the North. While Martin Luther King Jr. managed to march through a number of Southern towns during the civil rights movement, a city he chose not to march through for fear of violence was Cicero, Ill. When activists marched through the Chicago suburb without King to address housing segregation and related problems, they were met by angry white mobs and bricks. And when a judge ordered Boston city schools to integrate by busing black and white schoolchildren into each other’s neighbourhoods, white mobs pelted the buses with rocks.

Reverse Racism

“Reverse racism” refers to anti-white discrimination. It’s often used in conjunction with practices designed to help minorities, such as affirmative action. The Supreme Court continues to receive cases that require it to determine when affirmative action programs have created anti-white bias.

Social programs have not only generated cries of “reverse racism” but people of colour in positions of power have also. A number of prominent minorities, including the biracial President Obama, have been accused of being anti-white. The validity of such claims is clearly debatable. They indicate, though, that as minorities become more prominent in society, more whites will argue that minorities are biased. Because people of colour will surely gain more power over time, get used to hearing about “reverse racism.”!?

What Is the Most Racist Country in Europe?

The BBC's Panorama program broke the news that Poles are all massively racist. What were we even thinking of letting those bigots host the Euro 2012 soccer tournament? In response, the British press has been rumbling and wrangling away at people about it in that way the press does when it has nothing else to talk about. What the BBC have wilfully ignored, however, is whether any other country in Europe is actually any better.

SWEDEN

The Tag
The home of enlightened progressive thought and bending-over-backwards cultural deference.

The Evidence
FACT
Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce a research centre for racial biology—in the town of Uppsala. It was there that the idea of forced sterilization of the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the gay, or people suffering from ethnic minority-ness first found scientific credibility. Incredibly, this tactic was approved by the government and was still technically legal under Swedish law until fairly recently. Before 1975, if you were caught with a red hot pair of scissors in the vicinity of a gay Somali's testes, legally-speaking, there was nothing the police could do.

FACT
a recent survey showed that job-seekers in Sweden have a 50 percent higher chance of being called up for an interview if they have a Swedish-sounding name rather than an Arab-sounding one.

FACT
Earlier this year, Swedish Minister for Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth decided that she should do more to promote cultural harmony for World Art Day.

Verdict
Swedes are a nasty bunch of CV-binning cake-baking race haters, for whom tying the tubes of anyone who doesn't fulfil their eugenicide national ideal is as natural as tying their shoelaces (though we have to admit that all that eugenics has left them extremely good looking).

Racisme Rating
5/5

POLAND

The Tag
"Stay at home, watch it on TV. Don't even risk it... because you could end up coming back in a coffin." - Sol "Factually Accurate" Campbell

The Evidence
FACT
In mid-2011, a large group of Polish football supporters unfurled a banner proclaiming: "Death to the Hooked-Nosed Ones," illustrated with a picture of a Jew with a large crooked nose, at a stadium in Rzesow. The game was not televised. There were no players of Jewish origin on the pitch at the time. And, given that Poland's Jewish population is vanishingly small, it is not particularly likely there were even any Jews in the stadium at all.

Which doesn't make it any better, obviously, but it does, in fact, make the Poles in question seem even more unnecessarily pathetic.

Verdict
In a country which is 98 percent ethnically Polish, Poles have had to resort to being racist against people who don't exist. They probably maintain a sort of internal fantasy football league of race-hate, acting out this pitiful shadow-boxing in the absence of genuine targets. It is likely that, when no one else is around, Polish neo-Nazis force each other to dress up as Arabs in crude tea-towel and bath-sheet costumes, then beat each other with sticks just for the release.

Racisme Rating
2/5


GREAT BRITAIN

The Tag
The land that gave the world concentration camps, the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, the hut tax and Roy "Chubby" Brown.

The Evidence
FACT
in July 2008, the National Children's Bureau released a 366-page guide counselling adults on recognizing racist behaviour in young children. The guide, which was called "Young Children and Racial Justice," warned that babies should also be a part of "the effort to eliminate racism." Nursery staff, it said, should be on alert for racist remarks among toddlers.

FACT
In May of this year it was announced that the Metropolitan Police banned the use of the term "blacklist" in all official correspondence, concerned it might be offensive to people.

Verdict
The British are suffering from a national scourge of toddler race-hate. You can't go near a British play-pen these days without hearing terms like "nappy-head" and "ethnic Albanian." Britons spent hundreds of years constantly using a deeply offensive term like "b****list," knowing full well how demeaning it was, and therefore the "language of Shakespeare" should be reclassified as "the language of Hitler."

Racisme Rating
5/5


AUSTRIA

The Tag
Civilized, profiterole-enjoying classical music lovers and raging Nazis.

The Evidence
FACT
Austria gave the world —a UN Secretary General, who was also an actual certified ex-Nazi.

FACT
even after it had been sensationally revealed that he was a former Nazi volunteer, Austrians STILL elected Waldheim as their President. It was almost as if they all secretly knew already.

FACT
Austrians didn't just vote for the far-right politician Jorg Haider. They voted for him in droves: 27 percent in all. So alarmed was the rest of Europe with his policies that, in the year 2000, 11 countries broke off diplomatic links when he formed a coalition government. Haider was such a front in arch-nationalist.

Verdict:
If you try and flag down a cab in Austria, it will likely turn into a spontaneous curb side Nuremberg Rally. If you ask an Austrian for a cig, he will first offer you a "heil."

Racisme Rating
4/5


SWITZERLAND

The Tag
Keep-to-themselves, sensible, moderate, gold-loving neutralists.

Evidence
FACT
In 2007, the Swiss introduced a law meaning that all members of your local community would have to vote on your citizenship application before you could win a passport. Since they did so, Muslims, Jews, Balkans, Africans, and Asians have been disproportionately rejected. In 2008, a disabled man from Kosovo was rejected on the grounds that, a) he was disabled and this would cost his community money and b) he was a Muslim. In othe words, the system Works well.

FACT
This was a Swiss election poster in 2007.

The caption says: "For More Security." It is designed to publicize a pledge to kick out all foreigners who break Swiss laws.

FACT
The SVP, the party behind the poster, is not some fringe nutjob collective who go waterskiing with Andrew Brons on Lake Geneva. It is the largest single party in Switzerland. It is, effectively, the Swiss government. Here is some more of their recent handiwork:

Verdict
It's not just the Nazis' gold that the Swiss have hung onto.

Racism Rating
5/5


GERMANY

The Tag
"Really nice people" - The North Minehead Gazette

The Evidence
At the time of going to press, a comprehensive reading of the past hundred years of German history showed no documented incidents of any racial bias.

Verdict
Germans are the most placid, right-on and groovy folk on the continent. The only racism here is directed against them—so sort it out, brothers from another mother.

Racism Rating
0/5 !?

We’re all racist. But racism by white people matters more?!

Most white people don’t see themselves as racist. They can comfortably reel off a list of people of colour they know, like, or maybe even love. They can’t think of a time when they’ve negatively discriminated against someone on the grounds of their race. And they don’t see, in a concrete way, how their own race has positively affected them.

More than that, when people imagine a racist, they probably envisage a white skinhead sat in a pub ready to start a fight with the first black or brown person who walks through the door. That’s a convenient picture to conjure up – it’s pretty easy to comfort yourself that you’re nothing at all like that awful bastard.

In fact, though, everyone – of whatever colour – is racist. I’ve seen how our brains have a tendency to automatically associate our own race with good and other races with bad, whoever we are.

Psychological tests showed me this. I looked at the results of 2,846 British people who took an “Implicit Association Test”, designed to analyse automatic racial preferences.

On average, white Brits demonstrated a moderately strong bias towards their own race and black Brits showed a very weak bias towards their own race. I don’t think white people are born with some sort of racism gene – the main thing that explains those different scores is the way that society has geared up our brains differently.

I put myself under the lens too, and took a test where I was asked to put myself in the position of a police officer. Images of white men and black men flashed on a computer screen in front of me and I had less than a second to decide whether or not to shoot them, based on whether I thought they were holding a gun, or a harmless object like a can of drink or a packet of cigarettes. My results showed that I was slightly more likely to shoot white unarmed men than black unarmed men.

Does that make me a racist? To my surprise, I think it does. But I didn’t find those test results as troubling as you might expect.

That’s pretty unique. Compared with the other participants, my results were very unusual – the data shows most people are much more likely to shoot at black men than white men. But that data comes almost exclusively from white participants who are much more likely to be police officers holding the gun in the real world (94.5% of police officers in England and Wales are white, just 1.1% are black).

So if the tests show that bias works both ways, shouldn’t we spend more time talking about white victims of racism, rather than white perpetrators? When a white friend asked me a similar question I felt deep frustration. It’s because the question assumes that we work in a racially neutral society where prejudice against one group is equivalent to another. We don ’t.

I think of the gatekeepers in my life – not just the police officer I asked to record a crime for me but also the headteacher I asked not to expel me, the boss I asked to promote me – and in every instance I’ve sat opposite a white person and had to simply trust (what else is there to do?) that they wouldn’t view me differently because I’m not white. It’s a question of vulnerability. As long as systems of power remain white, racism against white people will not be the same as racism against people of other races.

I am, though, reluctant to dismiss anti-white racism altogether. Because the fact is, my friend and a lot of other white people in Britain genuinely believe racism affects them too: that people like me benefit more from positive action schemes than we suffer from negative discrimination. And they would never, ever use the word “racist” to describe themselves.

We need to acknowledge the frustrations of those white individuals who feel ignored by elites and who might vent this by turning against people of colour, or migrants. But taking apart the racist label and understanding that everyone is biased is an important first step in understanding how a racist society has affected us. Then we need to find a language that doesn’t conveniently overlook systems of power that are still set up to privilege one race: a white one?!

Have you ever wondered which are the most racist countries in the world? Despite what many of us who live in more inclusive societies think, racism is still a major problem in many parts of the world. Racism consists of any negative action or discrimination that is based on “racial” characteristics, be it skin colour, heritage, or some other trait that is a part of who they are as a people and race.

Of course, this racial distinction is an ideology which asserts that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called races, each one with particular inherited traits and other cultural and behavioural features. Currently, racism includes all sorts of distinctions, from ethnicity and religion, to cultural and societal affiliation.

Throughout our history, racism has been a driving force behind some of mankind’s greatest embarrassments as a species, including the slave trade, colonization, racial segregation, discriminatory laws and systems, Apartheid, genocides, The Holocaust, and many of the wars which have rocked nations and the world. After the Second World War, the United Nations Charter condemned racial discrimination and claimed respect for human rights. Moreover, in 2001 the European Union explicitly banned racism and any other form of social discrimination in their Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Despite the international denouncement of racism, this practice and discrimination has not yet disappeared. Although radical racism is no longer an outspoken practice, various forms of racism still exist in many of the most racist countries in the world, even in developed or so-called enlightened countries like Australia and Germany. It seems people still resort to these sorts of discriminatory practices when it comes down to it, and judge, fear, or dislike people because they are of a different race than them.

It seems these days it is even more important to call some attention to these issues for various reasons. We should bear in mind that both Western and Eastern societies yet carry out racist practices. Moreover, racism can be noted in the discrimination regarding job positions, access to privileges, political power and economic resources. This sort of discrimination is wide-spread across the world, even in some of the countries with the best quality of life. This list featuring the Top 20 Countries With The Best Quality of Life reveals the particular living standards of those populations in different parts of the world, ranked according to the Human Development Index.

For this list, we have gathered some of the countries in which racism is yet a regular practice, making the quality of life for some of the people living in those countries quite poor and degrading. Which countries are still afflicted with this sad and archaic world view!

France barely made our countdown, coming in the last position. Although still one of Europe’s superpowers, this year, France has dropped a few positions, being the 9^th country from the old continent to make the top twenty. With a gross national income per capita of $ 30,277 and a life expectancy of a little over 80 years, France is still a pretty cool place to live in.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Norway, who is not only Europe’s leader in terms of quality of life, but also number one in our countdown. Apart from being the highest ranking nation in the Human Development Index, Norway also has the highest gross national income per capita out of the 20 countries discussed here ($48,688).

We would like to present you with the top 20 countries with the best quality of life. Apart from France and Norway, our top twenty also includes nations such as Singapore, Iceland, and Sweden.

No.  20: France

No.  19: Singapore

No.  18: Austria

No.  17: Belgium

No.  16: Israel

No.  15: Denmark

No.  14: Iceland

No.  13: Hong Kong

No.  12: South Korea

No.  11: Canada

No.  10: Japan

No.  9: Switzerland

No.  8: Sweden

No.  7: Ireland

No.  6: New Zealand

No.  5: Germany

No.  4: The Netherlands

No.  3: The United States

No.  2: Australia

No.  1: Norway

A number of English-language news outlets have recently highlighted the "reversal of traditional migration patterns" between Portugal and its former colonies such as Angola and Mozambique.

What they miss is that migration to Portuguese-speaking Africa is hardly a new trend. Over the past few years, these countries have witnessed a significant surge in Portuguese arrivals, with the inflow of remittances from Africa rising sharply. According to the economist and now minister of economy Álvaro Santos Pereira, it increased 254-fold between 1996 and 2009.

Angola is now one of the favourite destinations for Portuguese migrants: about 100,000 Portuguese live there, whereas in Mozambique the estimates point to 20,000. In both cases the trend is the same: officially, there are now more Portuguese living in those countries than Angolans and Mozambicans living in Portugal (about 26,000 and 3,000 respectively). The trend can also be explained by the increase of Portuguese investment in these countries. Angola, for one, is the main importer of Portuguese products outside Europe.

In Portugal, the mainstream media has reported the new migration wave as a kind of new El Dorado. In glossy magazines, successful migrants are pictured wandering around big villas, bossing around teams of servants. But, particularly in the Angola case, there's another part of the picture that you'll only get if you chat with some of the Portuguese who flee there to live in a non-democratic country which now dictates economic rules to its former colonisers. The reversal of power relations between the former colonised and former colonisers may finally force Portugal to confront the issue of race.

This represent a considerable cultural shift. For years, modern Portugal has been struggling to find a way of talking about national identity and race. Even though Portugal has racial profiling, race crime and the daily subordination of black people by whites, most Portuguese would deny that their country has significant "racial problems" – that's what they have in America, France or the UK. Such attitudes are a hangover from the dictatorship years and the "luso-tropicalism" ideology created by the Brazilian Gilberto Freyre in the 1950s, which spread the idea that the Portuguese were better colonisers – and that ongoing British or French soul-searching over race was a result of "bad colonising".

Unlike America, Portugal has never got its head around hyphenated identities. There are luso-africanos, but you'd be pushed to hear anyone use that compound on the street, and it's even controversial in an institutional context. The term "black-Portuguese" is unheard of; the word "race" itself so rarely mentioned that it sounds strange and foreign. The terms you do hear people use are "second-generation immigrants", "immigrants' offspring" or, with cosmopolitan pretension, "new Portuguese". It sends out a clear message to non-white Portuguese: however hard you try, you'll always be newbies in this country (conveniently ignoring the fact that a black presence in Portugal dates back to the 15th century).

There are ideological reasons behind this attitude too. Some argue that identifying people by their race is discriminatory. There seems to be a similar logic behind the fact that Portuguese authorities keep no data on ethnicity or race. Take the recently released census data, which confidently predicts the population is now heading for more than 10 million, but remains completely race blind. Unofficial figures are contradictory and unreliable. (There could be 300,000 black Portuguese, I was told a year ago by one researcher. Another said there were 500,000. Another thought the number was much higher.)

You might argue that none of this should matter, of course. And yet, without appropriate data, can you honestly argue that the lack of social mobility in poorer communities has more to do with class than race, as some argue? Ignoring race completely means burying your head in the sand, and accepting Portugal as a country that is uniformly white. We are race blind, but not for the right reasons.

The recently appointed Prime Minister, the conservative Pedro Passos Coelho, is married to a black woman. In contemporary Portuguese politics, this is still a novelty. Will that make him more sensitive to questions around race? Will it make us talk more openly about race? Until now, nothing on his agenda makes us think so.

Racism, no! SAISI?!