How racist and intolerant is the UK?
Well according to many in the Scottish separatist movement, it’s some kind of xenophobic racist intolerant land of bigotry (all words I’ve hear to describe it and it's citizens, well, those south of the tweed of course....), and this is one of their excuses for demanding Scotland leaves a brexiting UK and rejoins the EU, which as you’ll see later does make one wonder if they’ve ever spent much time in much of Europe, other than briefly as a tourist….
Statements such as the one in the image above are bandied about as ‘fact’, unquestioned by those who willingly lap up anything that reinforces the nationalist narrative, that anything to do with the UK is bad or broken. Sadly this is how low the debate has sunk for the some of those sucked into the nationalist vortex, yet more ‘othering’ of our fellow UK citizens is fine if it’s in support of the cause.
On one occasion I argued with an individual who literally described the UK as a “hellhole of intolerance”, such comment reveals a stunning lack of awareness of the situations that much of the world’s population finds itself in. One has to wonder if the originator had ever travelled beyond the Auchtermuchty city limits, although to be fair a more likely explanation is simply that they are prepared to lie and exaggerate in order to try and ‘persuade’ people to their cause. Quite simply most of the seven billion plus people in the world live in far worse conditions, under far worse political regimes and with far fewer opportunities, rights and services than the majority of UK citizens, many of them also live in societies less tolerant of those who are ‘different’ in some easily identifiable way.
Lets have closer look at the implications of the above tweet from @Meljomur: Firstly is Britain xenophobic? Well, I suppose we must be slightly as there are undoubtably some xenophobes living here, as there are in most countries. But how many intolerant bigots does it take to define a country as ‘xenophobic’? I doubt she’s quantified it.
If we were to put a value on it then @Meljomur might be surprised that many of the ‘EU citizens’ who she implies might at least be able to escape it by going home would actually end up going somewhere potentially more xenophobic! Of course I doubt Mel did much research before typing her tweet. Do I have any evidence for this assertion that much of Europe is more xenophobic? Well yes:
If we were to put a value on it then @Meljomur might be surprised that many of the ‘EU citizens’ who she implies might at least be able to escape it by going home would actually end up going somewhere potentially more xenophobic! Of course I doubt Mel did much research before typing her tweet. Do I have any evidence for this assertion that much of Europe is more xenophobic? Well yes:
The map on the following link is derived from research into white attitudes to black people across Europe and shows that while the UK has some racist attitude, it is one of the lowest; lower than most other European countries (including France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, the Baltics, Czech Republic, Hungary and many others)
In the map the shading goes from blue (less racist) to red (more racist), low and behold the UK is comfortably on the less racist side of the scale, although admittedly still racist. I suspect this is hardly a surprise to anyone who has spent a lot of time on the continent away from tourist areas, and mixed with the locals.
In terms of immigration, a study by the EU themselves looked at attitudes to immigrants among member state populations. Again the British came in at the higher end of the scale in terms of people being comfortable interacting with immigrants:
What is also interesting if you examine the chart above, is that even in the few countries that had a higher percentage of people ‘comfortable’ with interacting, most of them had slightly more proportionally that felt ‘uncomfortable’ (as opposed to don’t know) in fact looking at the chart Britain has the second lowest percentage of people who feel ‘uncomfortable’ interacting with immigrants; what a bunch of xenophobes we are eh?
There are lots of studies that illustrate that Brits are not really any more racist or xenophobic than our European neighbours, and that there are many countries in Europe that often have far worse attitudes than us. Where the UK falls in these studies obviously varies, but it’s often in the upper (more positive) half of results. Here are a few examples:
Above from a Chatham House RIIA survey, UK had the second lowest proportion of respondents who think we should ban muslim immigration.
Above, from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, UK attitudes to refugees and whether they are perceived as terrorists, criminals or job stealers seem quite enlightened compared to some of our EU friends.
Above, More Pew research on whether populations view immigrants as an economic burden or make our economy stronger. Italy looks like a fun place to be an immigrant
In short there is plenty of evidence that the tweet pictured at the top of this post could reflect a poor understanding of the nature of xenophobia in the EU, or indeed that they just make stuff up to confirm their own bias. The worrying thing is she probably believes it.
Here's an interesting view on British 'post Brexit vote' xenophobia, written by an EU resident in the UK:
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/are-the-british-really-as-xenophobic-as-they-ve-been-made-out-to-be-since-brexit-1.3910892
This particular quote says it all really: "statistics now suggest that the Brits are broadly less racist than some of the people they're supposedly racist against"
Those who play the xenophobia card in order to virtue signal to the EU and smear the UK might do well to bear that in mind.
This particular quote says it all really: "statistics now suggest that the Brits are broadly less racist than some of the people they're supposedly racist against"
Those who play the xenophobia card in order to virtue signal to the EU and smear the UK might do well to bear that in mind.
