What do World Values Survey and Afrobarometer data show about negative attitudes toward Black people in Europe and Asia?
Executive summary
World Values Survey (WVS) and Afrobarometer are major cross‑national survey projects that measure attitudes toward foreigners, ethnic minorities, and discrimination, but neither source in the provided reporting delivers a simple, continent‑wide statistic quantifying “negative attitudes toward Black people” in Europe and Asia; instead, available syntheses (notably an OECD review) report regional patterns in self‑reported discrimination and stress the role of social and economic divides in shaping prejudice [1] [2]. Afrobarometer documents attitudes within African countries and is not a direct source for European or Asian public opinion on Black people, while WVS measures tolerance broadly and can be used to analyze such attitudes if specific items and country waves are examined [3] [1] [4].
1. What the datasets are and what they can (and cannot) show
Afrobarometer is a pan‑African, nationally representative survey series that maps values, governance evaluations and tolerance across African countries through face‑to‑face interviews and is intended for intra‑African analysis and global comparisons where relevant [3] [4] [5]. The World Values Survey collects comparable cross‑national items on tolerance of foreigners and ethnic minorities and other social values that can be used to assess negative attitudes toward outgroups, but the WVS documentation in the sources speaks to the instrument’s scope rather than delivering a ready‑made Europe/Asia breakdown focused specifically on attitudes to Black people [1] [6]. That gap matters: survey instruments may ask about “foreigners” or “ethnic minorities” without naming Black people, and regional aggregates can mask large within‑region variation, so inference requires careful, item‑level analysis not available in the cited summaries [1].
2. What broad regional summaries show about discrimination and attitudes
An OECD synthesis of multiple survey datasets — which explicitly incorporates non‑official surveys such as Afrobarometer and Eurobarometer — reports that self‑reported experiences of discrimination vary by region, with Asia and Europe showing lower average lifetime self‑reported discrimination than Northern America and Oceania, though patterns differ by type of discrimination (e.g., skin colour, ethnicity, religion) and country context [2] [7]. The OECD further finds that social, cultural and economic divides correlate strongly with reported discrimination, implying that structural inequality and cultural norms shape prejudicial attitudes across regions rather than a single geographic explanation [2].
3. Nuances and country‑level exceptions that complicate simple summaries
Pew’s multi‑country work (as cited) flags that concern about discrimination varies within Asia — for example, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka register high levels of concern about various inequalities — illustrating that Asian countries differ markedly and some show high sensitivity to discrimination, even if regional averages are lower [8]. Afrobarometer’s strength is precisely its country‑level depth across Africa, enabling comparative work, but that comparative design also reveals how context‑specific histories, migration patterns and political discourses shape attitudes — an implicit caution when applying Afrobarometer logic to Europe or Asia without matching local survey items [3] [9].
4. Methodological caveats, potential agendas and what the available sources don’t answer
All three sources stress methodological breadth and utility: Afrobarometer’s rounds and representative samples are designed to track trends and are used by policymakers and global institutions [3] [10], and the WVS offers comparable measures of tolerance [1]. Yet the cited materials do not provide a direct, aggregated WVS or Afrobarometer figure for “negative attitudes toward Black people” in Europe and Asia; nor do they present disaggregated, cross‑national item‑level results naming “Black people” as a target across those regions in the extracted snippets [2] [1]. Users seeking a definitive numerical comparison therefore need targeted analyses of WVS items or Eurobarometer modules that explicitly ask about race/skin‑colour attitudes in specific European and Asian countries — work beyond the summaries provided here [2] [1].
5. Bottom line and next steps for rigorous answers
The available reporting indicates that large surveys can and do measure intolerance and discrimination and that region‑level patterns show variation — with OECD synthesis pointing to lower average self‑reported discrimination in Europe and Asia than in some other regions, but important within‑region heterogeneity and structural drivers that complicate tidy conclusions [2] [7]. A rigorous answer about negative attitudes specifically toward Black people in Europe and Asia requires analyzing WVS and Eurobarometer item‑level data (and country‑level Asian barometers where available) that explicitly reference skin colour or Black people, a task not completed in the cited summaries and therefore beyond the claims that can be responsibly made here [1] [2].