Also, most people are less likely to agree to help you when they don't know what it is they're agreeing to yet. Telling them specifically what it is you need first is more likely to succeed.

Another thought that's occurred to me about the way people dress. Scruffily dressed strangers regularly ask you for money as you go about your business. Smartly dressed people in suits almost never do so. So perhaps people in suits just don't put us in some defensive mode of thought the way other strangers do when they ask for something.

Unfortunately, the black people in suits still only got helped at a lower rate than white people in casual clothes.

I'd be interested in seeing how this kind of thing would work out in a majority black country. Would whites in Tanzania be helped out more, less or the same as blacks? Maybe less, because people are less trusting of those who look like outsiders; or maybe more because people assume whites to be richer - like the effect of wearing a suit. Does anyone know if a similar experiment has been done somewhere?

You also need to check for spezific race/clothing stereotypes. I would not be suprised if Italians and Russians in suits are treated differently around here for instance, then other people in suits.

This is the big thing you want to take away from that study, actually. No matter how much you play with all the other variables, the fact is that being black always reduces your chances of people giving you the benefit of the doubt, all other things being equal. Even if you don't like the concept of white people having racial privilege, this study quite forcefully shows that at least in Australian society, some races come with a significant disadvantage when it comes to the kindness of strangers. If you're in the low racial bracket, you simply do not get given the basic courtesies that other races expect. And it's extremely likely that this sort of phenomenon is common throughout the world, even if the details around which races are the in the high, medium and low brackets.

Anecdotal evidence, plus I live in a recent former colony, but in Hong Kong people tend to be pretty deferential towards whites but can be quite unkind to anyone darker - Southeast Asians, Indians, or Africans. A white expat told me that whenever she walks into a shop, the staff becomes super-attentive and try to keep her in there longer possibly in the belief that having a white person in your shop will attract other customers. On the other hand, a Filipina woman told me that when she was pregnant, nobody ever offered her a seat on public transportation.

In Ngau's current line of work (teaching English in kindergartens), some schools expressly said that they would hire any white person over a more qualified ethnically Asian teacher. They're less interested in quality than in impressing the parents with a Real Life Genuine White Person.

When applying to teach English in Korean state schools, I noticed that they only accepted teachers from one of a selection of native English-speaking countries - the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I think. Given that many natives of these countries have bizarre dialects that you probably don't want your school children to learn, and that there are a plethora of native English speakers from various parts of Asia and Africa, I wondered if there was some racial element in this decision - as if it was more prestigious to have a white, British teacher than an equally qualified Chinese from Hong Kong.

Well, honestly speaking, "equally qualified" on paper does not necessarily mean that the person speaks English at a native level. Since most Hong Kongers literally cannot distinguish between American, English, Irish, Australian or New Zealand accents (they can't hear the difference), they don't really care which dialect or accent the teacher has as long as it isn't Chinese, which sounds low-class. That said, they will still almost always take a white person, even one with no teaching experience, and sometimes even one who speaks English as a second language, over a Chinese-Canadian or Chinese-British or Chinese-Australian person who speaks English perfectly.

I mean, you do need paper qualifications to teach in a primary or secondary school so they won't just hire any white person off the street, but kindergartens and private tutorial centres are pretty much unregulated as to who can teach in them. (Also note that I'm talking about subcategory of teachers called "Native English Teachers" whose job is to do conversational practice with students. Academic English teachers are a different story. For those, schools care more about paper qualifications and classroom management skills. Ngau has noticed that many of the full-time academic English teachers in the schools he works at cannot actually carry on a conversation with him in English.)

When I lived in Kenya, the people of the group they called "Asians" (in American we would call them "Indians" or "East Indians") had a higher social status than the people of native Kenyan ancestry. But even in parts of the country where everyone was black, there were still prejudices at work. People between whom an American would not know the difference could tell at a glance each other's tribal origin, and would very often treat each other accordingly.

In my experience, no group is so homogenous they can't discriminate. In Britain, the Irish are a distinct and less valued racial group, in America that sounds ludicrous --at least to modern ears. In Biblical times, the Jews hated the Samaritans, and they were about as closely related as two groups can get.

In your experience, would a white person travelling through Kenya be a walking target, or would people think "Oh, we'd better not mess with the white guy"?

One of the things that prompted my friend's rant was that another friend of ours (not the guy who walked across America) travelled through parts of Western and Central Africa that were quite dangerous - military coups and civil wars dangerous - and made it through in one piece. I think my friend was kind of incredulous at his hubris in doing that, and put it down to his being white-(ish). He was probably being unfair?

Holy crap!

...Did your friend consider the walker through Africa successful due to whiteness, or filled with hubris due to whiteness? Or both?

Both. Especially since this guy is normally a major flake with the attention span of a gnat. Although he didn't walk through Africa, he rode on buses and trains.

It sounds ludicrous in Britain too, because it's not been true for a long time. The Irish suffered discrimination in Britain in the 1960s, they don't in the 21st century.

Your general point point about how people will always find differences to discriminate on is right, though.

Well, almost. There are still negative stereotypes about the Irish in Britain. But no more so than there are about, say, the French, or Germans, or Americans.