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Highlighting India's racist bent?

Submitted by Karthik on 16 May, 2013 - 10:25

The Washington Post has an article based on a study conducted by a couple of Swedes on racial intolerance across the world. Te resulting infographic highlights India and Bangladesh as being two of the most racially intolerant places in the world. Then again, seeing Pakistan all in blue is surprising. But seeing as to how this is about racial intolerance rather its religious cousin, perhaps this could be explained. However, while all surveys should be treated as just that, these results, IMO, need to be considered along with a generous sprinkling of salt especially once you consider the methodologies used.

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 original study and a report on the correlation between economic freedom and social tolerance is available here.