re: #97 windsagio

Tell me about Institutionalized racism in Germany, France, Japan, S.Korea, or whatever.

All nations have racism sure, but seroiusly. The problem in the US is bad, and we have to come to terms with it. The good news is that the Obama election is making that happen.

In most of Africa, tribes and ethnicities kill each other based on nothing but race. In Sri Lanka, civil war has raged for 25 years based on nothing but race. In China, a contestant on Chinese Idol who was not full blood Han sparked a huge national controversy over the purported superiority of the Han race, and the internet comments made Hot Air look like a cuddly lefty blog. In China, police state policies over immigrants are far worse than anything Arizona could dream up, and have been that way for years. In most of SE Asia, nobody would think twice about not hiring someone based on nothing but race. My own parents left the country of their birth because a law was passed that made it very difficult for those of their race to own property.

In any Western nation, including here, any of those policies would be political death at best, and grounds for revolution at worst. The attitudes about race that most of the rest of the world holds would never, ever, be socially acceptable here. That doesn’t mean racists don’t exist, but Western nations are by far the least racist around.