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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

Yep! I remember being taught it was something "shifty" Chinese people do to their food to make it taste better as a sort of dishonest competitive trick, at the cost of the health of their customers. I was told so many ethnic groups were "shifty" like this compared to the "moral" white majority. I think growing up in the USA means being exposed to a lot of different kinds of racisms and "otherings." Its incredible how in denial some people are over this and how "racism is dead, if it ever existed" is a common theme in the USA, especially over the last 4 years due to presidential politics.

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It’s not a “USA” thing. Different groups of people are skeptical of other groups of people, all over the world. The US is just unusual in having enormous amounts of people from different groups interacting with each other.

The UK, for example, isn’t just 90% white. It’s 80% white British. Same thing for Germany and France. They’re borderline ethnostates. The US isn’t more than 15% of any ethnic group (with German Americans being the largest group).

  > The UK, for example, isn’t just 90% white. It’s 80% white British.

Is that still the case? My then-13 year old daughter visited London two years ago, when she returned I asked her if the British are as polite as they are rumored to be. Her answer was that there are no British in London, it's a city of all immigrants and tourists.

London is a massive outlier in basically every way compared to the rest of the UK, but London is still like 45% white British (according to the wiki page).

In 2011 roughly 35% of the population of London was born outside the UK. In terms of population the biggest groups are from India, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Bangladesh and Nigeria (in that order).

Our last census was 2011 so the data is pretty close to as out of date as it could possibly be. We'll have another in 2021 (I say we although I'll be out of the country for that one).

Interesting, thank you!

London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in world. I walked down the main streets, not even the white people were speaking English! I’m sure many turists but still It’s a great city!

I also went to Birmingham and it’s much different. I talked to taxi cab driver and he said he ever left his city even though it’s very small. So maybe less mixing in smaller places in UK.

Good to know. She is extremely observant, so I'm glad to see this confirmation.

Well, its 'total' 60% white (20% more white than NYC), which is pretty white, nor is that whiteness distributed evenly. I was just in Chelsea, which is pretty pricey, and it was near exclusively white outside of people who worked in the service industry. Depending where in London she went and what she did, she ran into different groups of people, much like if you went to Chicago and stayed exclusively on either its south or north sides.

More than likely, as a tourist, she saw mostly other tourists and the largely immigrant dominated low-paying service industry jobs. I was also recently in Iceland and while in pure 'tourist mode' saw few native Icelanders due to so few working in the tourist and service industry. When we ventured out to the neighborhood store areas, boutique shops, non-tourist bars, higher-end restaurants, etc it was almost 100% white.

>tourists.

You may want to remind her that when she's in traffic, she's also traffic. Of course its full of tourists, she's there isn't she? Its beautiful and historic and should be full of tourists - the same way Athens, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, etc are full of tourists. This is a feature, not a bug.

Thank you for that wonderful insight. As you mention, in London she was in tourist mode, doing things and being places where tourists are. That is a good lesson to point out, selection, when examining any survey.

Just go back 50 years, they were 95% single ethnic states with remaining 5% european minorities.

> I remember being taught it was something "shifty" Chinese people do to their food to make it taste better as a sort of dishonest competitive trick, at the cost of the health of their customers.

Yeah the MSG thing is clearly racism. But to be fair pretty much every Chinese takeout places uses white rice by default and charges an extra dollar for brown rice, which makes the food taste better at the cost of the health of their customers.

Outside of Thai, I think most restaurants charge more for brown rice.

I hesitate to add this because it's anecdotal, but I have had more than one person tell me of restaurants that say no MSG on the front window, but when passing behind the restaurant, noting empty cartons of MSG.

The prejudice comes in when people then assume all Chinese restaurants are therefore dishonest, discounting that restaurants everywhere are capable of being a bit dishonest ... Kangaroo meat in burgers, selling pork as veal... Frozen food sold as fresh. Just watch a Gordon Ramsey show.

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