MAP: Racially Tolerant Nations

The Washington Post created the above map in response to a survey examined by Swedish economists. According to the survey responses, the least racially tolerant places are India, Jordan, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it does appear to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)

The Post notes that some people surely lied to pollsters and that the "unanswerable question" is whether people in some countries are more likely to be honest about their racism.  A follow-up article from the Post examines the countries which are most ethnically diverse.