10. Poland
White population: around 38 million
By summing percents of white ethnic groups living in Poland (96.9 percent of Polish, 1.1 percent Silesian, 0.2 percent German, 0.1 percent Ukrainian), we estimated that around 38 million whites live in the country. Besides Silesians, about whom there is ongoing debate whether they should be regarded as a specific ethnic group, Germans, Ukrainians, and Belarusians represent largest minority communities in Poland. Non-white population in Poland includes Vietnamese (around 50.000), Zulus, African Americans, Kurds who are present in hundreds.
Poland, along with other Slavic countries on the list, falls into the category of less racially tolerant places. On EVS and WVS 2005-2009, Polish expressed similar levels of racial intolerance – around 12 percent of participants reported that they wouldn’t like to have a neighbor of a different race. The percent was more than halved on the next WVS 2010-2014 when 5 percent of respondents showed racial intolerance. However, this doesn’t mean that Polish became more tolerant in the meanwhile; at least, that’s what BBC Panorama episode from 2012 suggests. The episode titled Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate, which was aired shortly before beginning of European Championship, hosted by Ukraine and Poland, showed widespread racial violence and anti-Semitism in two countries. Although both governments criticized the episode as not representing reality, no one can dispute that racial incidents described by BBC really took place.
