Picked this up from TCAL. It’s originally drawn from a University of Ulster paper, but they got it from the Belfast Telegraph originally. The acid test of the study relates to a single question. “Would you like to have persons from this group as your neighbours?” They were given just five possible answers: people from another race, immigrants or foreign workers, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals. In the end (by these indices at least), Northern Ireland’s ultra conservative society beats Greece (by one percentage point) to become ‘Bigot Capital of the World’.
Interestingly the major ‘victims’ are gay (over 80% of bigoted persons in Northern Ireland and Canada and 75% of bigots in Austria, the USA, Great Britain, Ireland and Italy would not want homosexuals as neighbours). This from Pink News:
Not only does the province have the highest proportion of bigots, but the bigots are on average more bigoted than those in other countries. The main target of Northern Irish prejudice is the gay community, with over a third of respondents saying they did not want gay neighbours.
Interestingly Scandinavia headed the list for bigotry against Muslims:
The exceptions to this were the Scandinavian countries in which the main target of bigotry was Muslims: 74% of bigoted Danes, 68% of bigoted Swedes and 63% of bigoted Icelanders did not want Muslims as neighbours. The corresponding proportions for homosexuals in these countries were, respectively 37%, 44% and 43%.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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