While it pains me to say it, Blue Flame does have a valid point.
The question in this survey can only tell us which populations have more or fewer people who think that they are racist.
It is not uncommon for people who are racist to believe that they are not racist, and that what we might perceive as racist behaviour is normal, acceptable and completely harmless.
Of course some racist people may think that they are racist but what does it matter? We can assume that the percentage of racists who claim not to be ones is equal in every nation or at least very close to being equal.
On the other side you have a study that is relatively sound and on Blueflame's side you have nothing, just a troll trying to agitate.
Why can you assume that?
We are looking at a study aiming to show differences between different cultures. To make an unfounded assumption that they all the same in another respect just to defend a poorly worded survey question is an obvious error.
Anyway, my point is not that there are people who know they are racist but claim not to be. It is that there are people who are racist, but honestly believe that they are not. This is likely to be influenced by social norms, so one would expect there to be different percentages of these people in different cultures where racist behaviour is more acceptable or unacceptable in those cultures. This effect would make results obtained by the original survey question unreliable.
First of all we are looking at differences in different Countries. Not totally different cultures since the countries compared were European. Yes, every country has it's own cultural quirks but that's it. The difference between countries in self perceivement can't be so huge that it would cause anything BlueFlame has suggested. Yes there are people who are racist and don't admit it but can you honestly say that for example because of social norms in Italy there would be at least twice as much people than Belgium lying in this quiz? The argument was that Italy was by far the most racist country in Europe which according to the survey is practically impossible.
For Italy to be even in top 3 in racism, they'd have to have more than 10 percentage units of the population more people who are racist but don't admit it than any of the top three countries. For Italy to surpass Belgium the difference would have to be 25 percentage units of population. So if there is 10% of Belgium people who lied, there'd have to be more than 35% Italian people who lied. 250% more. Sounds likely?
It's not that you don't have a valid point in theoretical aspect when you want to be 100% accurate but in this argument the odds of Italy being more racist than the other European countries are non-existent.
I understood your point but unless you are saying Blueflame is correct (which I thought you did since you said he has a valid point) you bring nothing to the original argument.
Your point is valid, to a certain extent, but it doesn't change the fact that BlueFlame was wrong. And that 250% is simple math to show you how great this ''cultural difference'' of yours in basic human behavior would need to be for BlueFlame to be correct. If you have a problem with math or 250 is just too big number for you I'm sorry but I fail to see how numbers and facts bring anything else than credibility to this argument that has way too much personal opinions instead of facts.
