Is The Philippines One Of The Most Racist Countries In The World?

The Philippines is one of the most racially intolerant countries in the world, a survey claims. This can be surprising to many as the Philippines is a country populated not just by Filipinos but a diversity of races from other nations. Many Europeans, Americans, Africans and other Asians call this archipelago home. Apparently, the diversity of people living in a country does not necessarily signify racial tolerance.

In order to gather data for a research paper titled Does Economic Freedom Foster Tolerance?, two economists from Sweden named Niclas Berggren and Therese Nilsson seeked the help of World Values Survey, a non-profit association described by Wikipedia as "a global research project that explores people’s values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have."

One of the questions that the World Values Survey asks concerns identifying kinds of people that the respondents wouldn't want as neighbors. There's a list of answers where the respondents can choose from and one of these is "people of a different race". The economists reasoned that the more frequently people from a country choose this answer, the more racially intolerant they are.

The data collected through the survey shows that India and Jordan are the two most racially intolerant countries in the world. Over 40% of the respondents surveyed from these countries indicated that they would not want a person of another race as a neighbor. The Philippines fall under the 20% to 39.99% bracket. Although lower than the rate in India and Jordan, this still puts Philippines as among the racist countries in the world.

The survey shows that the most racially tolerant countries are Anglo and Latin nations (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and countries in Latin America).

However, the survey has been questioned on its accuracy. There's the possibility that many of the respondents may have been lying. For example, the survey shows South Korea as not very tolerant but shows Pakistan as remarkably tolerant. These are outliers. One would expect South Korea to be tolerant and Pakistan to be intolerant.

The Washington Post has created a map of the most racist countries in the world based on the data from the survey. Go here to view the map. What do you think? Do you agree with the findings of the survey? Leave your thoughts and comments below.

Sources: The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, Wiley Online Library