Are you a racist if you prefer to live in a mono-ethnic society?

[ingemann]

It's not inherently racist. However, it unavoidably leads to rampant xenophobia, and xenophobia oftentimes turns into racism.

I have only one word to you; Switzerland.

[ingemann]

I have noticed that most posters consider any defence of ethnic homogenity to be racist. Given that most of you are from highly multiethnic USA with a troubled racial history that's not surprising.

But given that many Asian and European societies are historically monoethnic or almost monoethnic I personally don't think that's true. You can be against immigration of people from other ethnic groups without necessarily having any feeling of racial superiority or prejudices of people from a different background.

Fx. South Korea is about 99,98% Korean and all Koreans I have met define their national identity as ethnically based and prefer their country to stay that way. Does that make them racist?

Personal I don't think it's worth anyones time to bring the issue up, as you can see in this thread the result is hysterics, insults and namecalling, rather than anybody discussing the issue.
I think one of the reasons is the class make up of this board, most people here is young and upper middleclass suburbanites. For such a group there's little effect in living in a diverse neighbourhood. Where such things matters are for less well-off groups like in a working class or mixed working-lower middleclass neighbourhoods, where people are single out because they're the Other. If you rich diversity are a net positive something which set you apart from the pack, it also do so among the poor, there it just make you a prey for unpleasantness.

That's the effect on a individual level. if we look at societies, a diverse society is a less solidaric society, people help people who are like themselves. We see it in USA with the generic welfare queen (Black of course in people's imagination), of course we also see it in Europe with the growth of xenophobic parties and the general strengthening of the anti-solidaric parties. People are not as willing to pay taxes, if they feel the money goes to the Other. Americans loved the growing welfare state, until Blacks was allowed to partake in it, in the same way in Europe the love of the welfare state has cooled as people feel it more and more goes to immigrant groups.

[ingemann]

Not necessarily but generally and the preference makes little sense to me. Countries with many emigrants, a variety of religions, styles of cuisine, music and art are the best. The trade-off in social solidarity isn't worth giving up what makes organic societies in the 21st century.

I think it's you Americans who make a virtue out of necessarity  (an admirable trait), you don't have the choice (at least not without some very unpleasant policies), but it doesn't mean that other countries or their population whom have the choice have to share the same attitude.

Of course the question is also what people mean with mono-ethnic, if people says that they prefer to live in a 100% mono-ethnic state I would likely raise my eyebrows, but for most it just mean that the vast majority of the population belong to the same national/ethnic identity group, but minorities still exist.

[ingemann]

It's not inherently racist. However, it unavoidably leads to rampant xenophobia, and xenophobia oftentimes turns into racism.

I have only one word to you; Switzerland.

Explain, please. It's news to me that people in Switzerland desire to live in a mono-ethnic society. I mean, you know that this country has never been and can by definition never be "mono-ethnic", don't you?

Perhaps his point was that Switzerland is quite racist despite being multiethnic?

Making generalisations about Switzerland is quite ridiculous anyway because the different parts that make up Switzerland are so different linguistically, culturally and politically speaking. And I contend that those who make generalisations about Switzerland such as "Switzerland is racist" know little to nothing about the country.

I singled out Switzerland, because it's just as xenophobic as the its more homogene neighbours. When someone adopt the talking point that homogene countries lead to xenophobia, it's interesting to take a peaceful first world heterogene country, and show that it do not significant differ from its neighbours.