Which is more racist/xenophobic? Europe/Australia or USA?

[Mr. Morden]

I don't think you can say that in any European nation, the son of an immigrant could become President/Prime Minister.

Australia has gone even farther than that.  The Prime Minister isn't just the daughter of immigrants, she *is* an immigrant! 

[Mr. Morden]

I'm reminded of this discussion on the varying %age of racial minorities in different Western countries, and how that impacts the likelihood of another country electing their own version of Obama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=86669.15

Including Verily's attempt to quantify the fraction of the population that's a racial minority in different countries, circa 2008:

Using Wikipedia's demographic data, here's a list of interesting countries:

1. United States: 34% minority (includes Hispanic whites)
2. New Zealand: 20% (includes Maori, Asian and Pacific Islanders, but not other minorities)
3. Canada: 16% ("visible minorities" only; i.e. non-whites)
4. Australia: 15% (non-European descent)
5. United Kingdom: 14% (only non-whites)
6. Netherlands: 13% (only non-whites)
7. France: 9% (only non-Europeans, but includes self-IDed white North Africans)
8. Germany: 4% (only non-whites)
9. Spain: ~3% (difficult to estimate due to ambiguous status of part-Native Latin Americans, much, much higher if all Latin Americans are considered minority, could be in between if only those self-IDed as non-white are included)

[Mr. Morden]

I don't think you can say that in any European nation, the son of an immigrant could become President/Prime Minister.

Australia has gone even farther than that.  The Prime Minister isn't just the daughter of immigrants, she *is* an immigrant! 

The Opposition Leader is too

Weren't Abbott's parents Australian citizens who were living in the UK at the time?  If so, then I'd guess he would have been an Australian citizen at birth, and his situation would be analogous to that of John McCain or George Romney.  I don't know that such people would qualify as "immigrants" by any straightforward definition of the term.

Gillard, OTOH, was simply a UK citizen who immigrated with her family when she was young.  She would then count as an "immigrant", one would assume.

[Mr. Morden]

Given that I actually am Australian, the immigration debate here is far worse than in America. So the former, plus also the far-right is more influential in Europe than America (unless you live in the Deep South or Arizona)

Yes, the immigration debate is "worse" in Australia than the USA, but it's complicated.  There's no easy way to make the comparison in certain respects.  You've also got to distinguish between racist attitudes that people will actually voice in public, and those that they might hold in their heart.

For example, in the USA, you've got informal speech codes regarding what people are willing to say in polite society that would reveal white/black racism.  Those have been built up over decades of negotiation within the culture.  The same sort of thing doesn't necessarily exist in the same way in countries where the %age of the population belonging to minority groups is much smaller.  And even where it does exist, does less "offensive speech" represent a society in which people have more enlightened attitudes, or one in which people are more careful about what they say?

It's also true that while there's a strong stigma against overt bigotry against blacks in the USA, that stigma does not exist to the same degree for bigotry against, say, Muslims.  This is of course a product of the particular history of the USA, and other countries will have negotiated these things within their cultures in a different way.  That makes a simple yes/no either/or comparison on "who's more racist?" a challenge.

[Mr. Morden]

I don't think you can say that in any European nation, the son of an immigrant could become President/Prime Minister.

Australia has gone even farther than that.  The Prime Minister isn't just the daughter of immigrants, she *is* an immigrant!  

The Opposition Leader is too

Weren't Abbott's parents Australian citizens who were living in the UK at the time?  If so, then I'd guess he would have been an Australian citizen at birth, and his situation would be analogous to that of John McCain or George Romney.  I don't know that such people would qualify as "immigrants" by any straightforward definition of the term.

Gillard, OTOH, was simply a UK citizen who immigrated with her family when she was young.  She would then count as an "immigrant", one would assume.

I don't think that's comparable. It's not as though British immigrants have ever had any trouble being accepted into Australian society.

Of course it's not comparable, that's why I included a in my initial post.

My point was that Gillard is an immigrant, but that not all immigrants are viewed the same way.