When Westerners talk about the differences between them and people from other countries some topics seem to come up almost always. The tolerance of the Western world for example is something we just love to brag about. But how tolerant are we really? The Get Data blog took a look at the numbers from an American perspective.
Where does the American Public Stand on Racism?
The World Values Survey is an association of social scientists from around the world that gather data on human values, political and social life, as well as a host of other social statistics. Using the WVS data, we’ll present a brief analysis of tolerance, racism and xenophobia in the Western world.
The below figure shows the number of respondents by country that affirm the following positions. All questions began with, ‘Would not like to have as neighbours:’ and ends with the y-axis category. For example the first survey question was, ‘Would not like to have as neighbours: Different Race’ and 5.6% of American affirmed with this statement.
Even within the Western world huge differences between neighbouring countries can be observed. While only 3.5% of the respondents from Sweden had a negative view on immigrants, 21.5% of Germans did.
Tolerance towards Homosexuality in the US
As we can see in the below figures, which again uses WVS data, the United States ranks among the most tolerant countries towards homosexuality. Still, more than 24%, almost a quarter, of Americans believe homosexuality is never justifiable and only 21.5% believe homosexuality is always justifiable with similarly low numbers found in countries like Germany compared to 60% of Swedes.
