Who would you nominate? The US certainly has severe problems with racism, but everything I've ever read about other countries has led me to believe that this isn't actually a totally implausible claim.
> The WVS survey asks respondents from more than 80 countries dozens of questions, including one that asked respondents to identify types of people they would not want as neighbors. The more people of a particular country responded that they would be happy to have a neighbor of a different race, the more racially tolerant the respondents' country would be considered
That is based on 2 studies, one of which puts the US as one of the least racist countries and the other puts the US as among the most racist. Something is wrong.
The US is very racist by self reported observation of racism. However citizens of different countries have different definitions of racism.
If you use a constant definition of racism like “Would you live next to people of another race, yes/no?” Then you find that almost all Americans say yes (low racism) . In some other countries over 70% of people would not live next to a person of another race.
It depends a lot on which part of the US you look at. Here’s a high school having its first ‘integrated’ (i.e. not racially segregated) prom a mere 11 years ago: https://youtu.be/fDla-r2uj7U?si=Zun-NdDnjnSq0Yk4 The idea of formally separating an event like this by race would have been shocking 11 years ago in many Western countries. The US is ahead of the curve in some ways regarding racism, but it still has incredibly high levels of de facto racial segregation. As a Brit who lived in the US for a while, this was the aspect of US life that surprised me the most. Many white Americans still quite openly regard majority black towns or city districts as no-go areas (even though they don’t openly talk about it in racial terms). You see segregation on a smaller scale too (e.g. the common pattern of the restaurant with all white serving staff and all Latino kitchen workers). I’m aware that this kind of segregation isn’t usually the result of a deliberate evil plot to segregate people, but it’s still notable.
I am not saying that the UK is necessarily ‘less racist’ overall than the US. I think racism manifests itself quite differently in the two countries, so it’s hard to compare.
Canada and New Zealand are part of the “west” so they’re very similar to the US.
Jamaica is a good pick. A non western country that has very low levels of racism.
Maybe the assertion should be that the US is amongst the least racist countries in the world. The US is clearly in a different league compared to Russia, China and India.
Why do you think Caribbean nations are not part of the "west"? How about countries in Africa or South America?
Why do you think Russia, China, and India are "more" (moar?) racist than the US? All three of those countries are continent-sized and (internally) wildly diverse. Interestingly, all three of them have significant minority groups that practice Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity, yet they are peaceful places to live. This whole Internet trope that the US is more or less racist than country X is weird. I see it so many times. Any country that had institution racism well into the 20th century (many!) is going to be working through a continent-sized garbage dump of cultural baggage. I don't care so much about any country's absolute state; I care more about their direction and progress.
Two interesting examples:
30 years ago Germany treated Turkish people, who had peacefully and legally settled thanks to the post-war guest worker programme, as second citizens. Today is completely different. There are ethnic Turks who are national ministers!
Less extreme: Both Italy and Romania have large populations of Roma people (outdated term: gypsy), but today they are more integrated into mainstream society than ever. 30 years ago they were absolutely second class citizens.
Regarding China, Russia and India. They’ve all got a big problem with the literal enslavement of people from ethnic minority communities. I think that’s racism.
People see he’s a different race so they treat him badly because of it. No one is worried about being called racist.
He was arrested several times a day for being black. No one in the whole chain of events viewed this as a problem.