The sin of racism is almost invari­ably con­joined with ref­er­ences to its most per­ni­cious off­shoots; colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and exploita­tion. That’s valid until it becomes selec­tive, at which point it speaks ill of we who like to think of our­selves as “right think­ing peo­ple”, and of those we elect as leaders.

The Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary defines racism as: “poli­cies, behav­iours, rules, etc. that result in a con­tin­ued unfair advan­tage to some peo­ple and unfair or harm­ful treat­ment of oth­ers based on race.”
Based on that, it ought to be rel­a­tive­ly easy to list the world’s top ten most racist coun­tries. If, like me, you can’t do it with­out research, blame it on selectivity.
Accord­ing to the World Pop­u­la­tion Review, in 2022 they are, in descend­ing order: Qatar, Ser­bia, Sau­di Ara­bia, Sri Lan­ka, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Slo­va­kia, Myan­mar, Israel, Ukraine and the Unit­ed States.
It should come as no sur­prise that three of the guilty are Arab States. They’ve been prac­tic­ing it for at least 1300 years.
An esti­mat­ed 9 mil­lion Africans crossed the Sahara shack­led in sham­bling car­a­vans or on ships from slave mar­kets in Zanz­ibar to Oman, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Iraq. The only Africans not tar­get­ed by Arab slavers were those who had embraced Islam. How’s that for racism?
Today, the Gulf states, before whom the West bows in the name of oil, rely on import­ed labour­ers toil­ing for min­i­mum wages with­out recourse to unions, courts or even their trav­el documents.
In the judge­ment of  Bernard Frea­mon, adjunct pro­fes­sor at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law: “Each is an exam­ple, and per­haps the only exam­ples exist­ing in the world today, of what the soci­ol­o­gist Moses Fin­ley (1912–86) called a ‘gen­uine slave society’.”
A report by Human Rights Watch con­clud­ed that in the twelve years it took to pre­pare sta­di­ums and infra­struc­ture for the foot­ball World Cup in Qatar, the Third World work­ers who did it “faced wide­spread wage theft, injuries…”. Esti­mates of how many died in work-relat­ed acci­dents range from hun­dreds to sev­er­al thousand.
Yet for the most part, that had no effect on Qatar’s inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. Cen­sure has been all but drowned out by cheer­ing for the games. The worst that hap­pened to the sheikhs were a few diplo­mat­ic equiv­a­lents of “yel­low cards” in the form of lead­ers of com­pet­ing nations not show­ing up to cheer their side on.
The Chi­nese philoso­pher Con­fu­cius summed that up two and a half thou­sand years ago:“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cow­ardice.”

                      GETTING AWAY WITH IT

Despite a vile his­to­ry, anti-Semi­tism is an increas­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous form of racism. That alone makes Israel’s Num­ber 8 spot on the top ten racism table all the more lamentable.

Hav­ing report­ed for many years on both the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict and South Africa, I think labelling Israel’s poli­cies and action in the Occu­pied West Bank a form of apartheid is valid.
In a study con­duct­ed in 2016: “Near­ly half of Israeli Jews say Arabs should be expelled or trans­ferred from Israel, includ­ing rough­ly one-in-five Jew­ish adults who strong­ly agree with this position.”
Six years lat­er, Israel’s lat­est coali­tion gov­ern­ment includes the Otz­ma Yehu­dit (Jew­ish Pow­er) par­ty, whose leader Ita­mar Ben-Gvir has been con­vict­ed of racism.
Beza­lel Smotrich, the Min­is­ter of Finance styles him­self a “proud homo­phobe”, and has said he is in favour of seg­re­gat­ing Jew­ish and Pales­tin­ian women in Israel mater­ni­ty wards.
Diana But­tu, a lawyer and for­mer advis­er to the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion nego­ti­at­ing   team wrote in the New York Times: “The atmos­phere of racism is so acute that I hes­i­tate to speak or read Ara­bic on pub­lic transportation.”
No U.S. leader has ever hint­ed at, nev­er mind issued a state­ment with regards to Israel has acknowl­edg­ing that might be true. 
As for the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Abra­ham Lincoln’s “self-evi­dent” truth “that all men are cre­at­ed equal; that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights…”, a study on the effec­tive­ness of “diver­si­ty train­ing” in the U.S. referred to “a pan­dem­ic of dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial and reli­gious resentment”.

                            SELECTIVE OPPROBRIUM

For his­tor­i­cal con­text, in the 1970s, Por­tuguese colo­nial rule in Ango­la, Mozam­bique and small­er colonies, and minor­i­ty White con­trol of South Africa and what was then Rhode­sia (now the close-as-damnit failed state of Zim­bab­we) were cas­ti­gat­ed, rebuked and sanc­tions-tar­get­ed (not with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion) for racism.
Liberia, found­ed in 1822 by freed slaves from the Amer­i­c­as, nev­er got a mention.

The small West African nation became offi­cial­ly inde­pen­dent in 1847. More than 130 years lat­er there was still deep resent­ment between descen­dants of the “Found­ing Fam­i­lies” and those of the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants over the cel­e­bra­tion of “Mathil­da New­port Day”, named for the woman who alleged­ly fired a can­non at tribes­men attack­ing a set­tler fort. Even Liberia’s mot­to: “The Love of Lib­er­ty Brought Us Here”, omits the country’s orig­i­nal inhabitants.
There are, of course, innu­mer­able ratio­nal­i­sa­tions, excus­es, expla­na­tions and apolo­gies for turn­ing a “Nelson’s eye” to obvi­ous instances of racism, espe­cial­ly at gov­ern­ment level.
Those who use them how­ev­er, would do well to heed the wis­dom of the inim­itable oppo­nent of racism in its most insti­tu­tion­alised form, South African Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu: “If you are neu­tral in the face of injus­tice, you have cho­sen the side of the oppressor.” 

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