In the wake of the protests in America, following the death of an African-American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer, Harvard University conducted a study on racist attitudes in Europe.
According to the research, Serbia has the lowest levels of racist attitudes in Europe. Harvard, the top university in the world, interviewed a whopping 288,076 white Europeans to reach these figures.
The controversial tests do not ask whether you hold racist views or who you vote for. Indeed, the test can reveal the “inner bigot” even in people who hold sincere anti-racist views. That’s because the test tries to measure something called implicit bias. That is, how quickly you associate blackness with negative concepts like “bad” or “evil” or positive ideas like “good” and “nice”.
According to the research, Serbia and Slovenia show the least racist implicit bias. This is a good reason to start a business in Serbia. The UK isn’t bad and falls in the range alongside Norway and Bosnia and Herzegovina. East Europe generally shows the most racist results, especially the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Belarus.
There is not one country which shows no bias and that includes Serbia. The maps show the level to which white people are biased against black people. Serbia scored lowest at 0.298 with Slovenia next at 0.302. (A figure of zero means neutral – neither pro-white nor pro-black.) The number of people surveyed in Serbia was relatively low at 370 but high enough to be statistically meaningful, say Harvard researchers. Note too that the research does not take into account other forms of racist bias, such as regional ethnic bias.
North and west Europe, on average, have less strong anti-black associations, although they still have anti-black associations on average. As you move south and east the strength of negative associations tends to increase – but not everywhere. The Balkans look like an exception, compared to surrounding countries.
No country had an average score below zero, which would reflect positive associations with blackness. In fact, none had an average score that was even close to zero, which would reflect neither positive nor negative racial associations.
(021.rs, 06.06.2020)
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