What Travel Has Taught Me About Racism
It's bad. But the devil is in the details.
For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.
The last time I was in Europe, I had dinner with a white South African, and it wasn’t long before he started in on lazy black South Africans and the many crimes they commit.
On one hand, there are some real problems in South Africa with crime and poverty. The legacy of apartheid is real and still very strong.
But almost everything this guy said struck me as outrageously racist.
And it always depresses me when a racist assumes I’m racist too because I happen to be white. It tells me that everyone in their circle talks the way they do — that they probably don’t even think of what they’re saying as racist.
Traveling the world for almost ten years now as a digital nomad, I’ve had lots of experiences like this, and it’s shifted my view of racism.
When Michael and I lived in Malaysia in 2022, for example, I was struck by how starkly the country is divided by race, and that the races definitely don’t mix. About 70% of the country is Malay (or, more specifically, Bumiputera — an official legal category that includes Indigenous groups), and there are strict government policies, quotas, and set-asides to assure that this group has, and always will have, social and legal dominance. But there’s a lot of talk about how this has made them soft and lazy.
Meanwhile, Chinese-Malaysians make up almost 23% of the country, and because they’re shut out of so many professions, they’ve become entrepreneurs — often, extremely successful ones — and there’s also a lot of talk about how industrious and ambitious these folks are. And Indian-Malaysians, who make up almost 7% of Malaysia, tend to do the country’s service work. Finally, an even smaller group of Bangladeshi immigrants do much of the country’s hard manual labor.
Is all this racist?
I define racism as: The belief that race accounts for differences in character and ability, and that some races are superior to others, and also the idea that some prejudice and discrimination are acceptable based on these beliefs.
And so, yeah, Malaysia sure seemed racist to me — even as I openly concede I didn’t truly understand this culture, especially after two short months, and my judgment comes via the massive baggage of my own Western values and cultural assumptions.
And even on its own terms, is the West any better, racism-wise? These days, it seems like we Americans are divided into two camps about our country: we either think we’re the least racist country on Earth or the most racist.
I think reality is somewhere in between, and research backs me up: America typically ranks in the mid-range of worldwide racism. The United States is very racially diverse, and all races report remarkably high levels of stated tolerance for other races. But “voluntary” segregation is real, and different races still experience starkly different average life experiences — the legacy of extreme state-sanctioned racism in the past.
And, of course, America has long tolerated and even reelected a blatantly racist president. (To argue that Donald Trump isn’t racist strikes me as either willful ignorance or profoundly bad faith.)
But Americans are also frustrated and exhausted by the country’s recent “racial reckoning,” thinking it did more harm than good — and, frankly, sometimes I think that too.
A progressive American once said to me, “Every time a white person and a non-white person are in a room together, there’s racism.”
Which, having been in many rooms with many non-white friends, I think is not only inaccurate, but also extremely unhelpful to the debate. If you define “racism” as “virtually everything,” as this woman does, then essentially nothing is racist — and people will understandably tune you out.
Was she using “racism” and “systemic racism” interchangeably? If so, that’s bad too, because they’re two very different concepts. But even then, I think defining “systemic racism” as “virtually everything” is also silly.
Sometimes it’s been nice to visit countries with a more innocent view of race — or at least of my race. China has serious problems with racism — especially of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Tibetans in Tibet, and various Indigenous populations — but Westerners in general and white people specifically are very much a novelty in many parts of the country.
During my visit last year to the Guizhou province in southwest China, it was fascinating to have flocks of young people come up asking to take a selfie with me, a white person (and also touching my head, which is something I was less thrilled with — I’m bald, and my head is shaved, and most of my life, people have tried to touch my apparently fascinating scalp, although typically it’s just children.)
Meanwhile, as Michael and I traveled through Europe these last few years, we were struck by how it seemed like everyone was talking about immigration — specifically, how religiously conservative immigrants weren’t assimilating into these more liberal cultures, and also how these folks were perceived as unfairly receiving generous government benefits.
At first, I was shocked by what seemed like open xenophobia — and also, again, how if people were so open in talking to me, someone they just met on a damn subway, then clearly this was the way they spoke to their friends all the time.
In the end, I decided that, yeah, some of this discourse was racism and xenophobia. But I also saw plenty of full burqas and lots of sudden social change, and I came to see that there might be some valid concerns mixed in there too — and politicians were ignoring them at their peril.
In almost every place I’ve been outside of the United States, people seem far more comfortable talking in racial or cultural stereotypes, and this still almost always shocks my more genteel Western American sensibilities.
Spend any time in Greece or Macedonia — the country, not the area of Greece — and you’ll quickly learn how little the Greeks and Macedonians think of each other.
“But the Greeks do make good olive oil,” one Macedonian told me with a laugh. “Even we can admit that!”
Sometimes openly repeating racial or cultural stereotypes seems understandable, given the dark histories involved, or even fairly innocent: there are obvious differences between cultures, and they’re often more dramatic than I thought before I left America to travel the world.
And plenty of black scholars argue that one problem with America is that people use “tolerant” platitudes to mask deeper prejudices.
Maybe it would be better if more Americans just said what they really thought.
But to be very clear: I think much of what I’ve heard around the world absolutely crosses the line into outright racism.
One of our guides in Thailand openly declared to us, “I won’t take Muslims anymore. They never stop talking, and they’re always late!”
And I’ve never heard anyone anywhere talk about anyone as negatively as the way many Europeans talk about the Romani, or Roma, people — widely known as “Gypsies,” despite the pejorative nature of that term.
“They’re all drug addicts and thieves,” a guide in Central Europe told me. “That’s how they make their money.”
Then again, living in Italy, I saw how some Romani steal the toilet paper in public bathrooms and then try to sell it back to you on your way in.
It’s obviously no one’s responsibility to represent their entire race or culture, but if you were trying to make people be prejudiced against the Roma, I honestly can’t imagine a better way.
Toilet paper? Come on.
With the rise of Trump, and the toxic nature of social media, I think America is becoming more like the rest of the world: more open and honest about what they feel when it comes to race, even if we’re now also more boorish, crude, and ugly.
Careful what you wish for, indeed.
So what has travel taught me about racism? Well, I still think it’s a really bad thing. But also, the devil is in the details.
And sometimes I think — as I do about so many topics: Hmm, I might be even more confused now than I was before I left home to travel the world.
Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book below.
Ooof. It might help to read some texts on the construction of race? Racism is real, but race very much is not, and that's sort of the root of the problem. One great book I've read recently is Caste by Isabel Wilkerson--highly recommended.
In traveling to dozens of countries over the past 30 years, I've seen racism in all countries, from all races. And yes, I suppose there are different levels of it, and in the details. Some people think racism is just a white thing. But there's a lot of racism among so many different ethnic and indigenous groups, even between each other. Certainly, it's often more subtle and not institutionalized. But I've been in so many places, situations, and conversations where prejudicial comments come up about some other group/people/tribe/religious group they deem inferior. I don't know what to think of it, other than the fact that a certain level of racism and prejudice is probably a normal part of human behavior. People will make inferences and assumptions about groups based on their lived experience.