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Comment by russellallen | Hacker News Reader

Given that the racial categories used are American (White/Black/Asian/Latino) I'm guessing this is only or mostly American data. In which case it probably should say so. "Race" is a culturally mediated difference and the categories of prejudice in other cultures aren't going to map to this in any universal way.

Just a comment from someone not in the US :)

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As an American who's spent the last ~10 years in Japan, the American idea of pan-Asian cultural/racial identity now feels extremely foreign to me.

As an Australian listening to a BBC interviewing a man about his Asian upbringing, it sounded weird. An unqualified 'asian' to Australian ears means South East Asian or Chinese. But to the British, it's apparently folks from the subcontinent. In neither case does it default to mean near/middle eastern or central asian.

I'm actually curious if there are greater cultural differences between Americans of different races (say black-white) than between Europeans from different countries but same class.

As an American who has a decent amount of interaction with Europeans:

It's much easier to interact with Europeans of similar class to me than it is local people across class boundaries.

This is anecdotal, but as a knowledge worker and an atheist living in the American south, it just feels like there is often an "unbridgable gap" with less well-educated folk around here.

Which speaks to the fact that America is culturally balkanized. I mean, yes, "nigger" was a very popular search term right when Obama was elected... that's because there's a small, distinct group of Americans, say 5%, that are very ignorant racists.

>Which speaks to the fact that America is culturally balkanized.

If you think Europe isn't "culturally balkanized" ask the next European you meet what they think about "Gypsies", and "Travellers ".

Europe has plenty of their own class/cultural issues--they just happen just a bit different than America's.

I would expect it to be culturally balkanized. Didn't say otherwise. Just sharing my experiences. Seemed to be what someone was asking about.

"that are very ignorant racists"

I would say they are not ignorant racists rather they are deliberate racists. As in, they're perfectly aware.

It's probably based off of their users' self-identified information.

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