Skin colour in global politics

Broadly speaking, those who write on global issues sometime focus on human skin colour. In dealing with colour, they divide the world population in four groups: White, Brown, Yellow and Black.

White is the dominant race in Europe. Britain, a white country, led the area and conquered a good part of the world in the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Its conquest of North America and Australia led to the migration of white people to these continents who defeated the native-coloured populations and established governing structures that dominated the native inhabitants.

In North America – in particular what eventually emerged as the United States of America – the European migrants converted vast tracts of lands to agricultures, growing cash crops such as tobacco. But the economy that was created needed labour to farm the land. The needed workers were brought in from Africa as slaves by buying people from native well-to-do landowners and shipping them to America.

Enslavement of large number of people created tensions within the colonised areas. In the United States, this led to a civil war between the states in the north that had few black people and the states in the south that had large slave populations. Under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln, the north won the war and slavery was abolished. However, it took decades before the freed black people won civil rights that were close to those enjoyed by the white population. Australia was another conquered area to which the white migrant population moved as migrants, displacing the coloured natives.

The next big coloured population is made up of the blacks in the continent of Africa. Most countries in the area were under the control of white colonial powers from Europe. Independence movements in some of the countries in the continent led to their freeing and becoming independent. Scores of African countries arrived on the global scene as self-governing nations. In between the white and black people are people of colour – brown and yellow. The brown people are mostly in South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal – and some have formed diasporas colonies in the Middle East Europe and North America.

Finally, there are the yellow people who inhabit China and East Asia. Over time, they have become dominant players in some parts of the global economy. Today's essay is the beginning of my longer study of human colour and global politics and with the growing conflicts among people of different colours. The most pronounced confrontation is between the United States, dominated by while people, and China, the country of yellow people.

Jin Yu Young, writing for The New York Times issue of July 17, 2026, under the caption "China viewed more positively than U.S. in 25 of 36 countries surveyed", states: "People in many countries around the world view China more positively than they do the United States." She based her conclusion on an intentional survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center that found that China was favoured in 25 out 36 countries surveyed between March and May of 2026. It was the first time in two decades that China beat the United States in the majority of countries that were polled.

While China had reached out to the world with game-changing investments (like in Pakistan where Beijing has spent billions of dollars constructing roads, bridges and dams), the shift was, according to the report, due to deteriorating opinions of the US. "The Pew findings confirm the collapse of U.S. soft power under President Trump's leadership, driven by his administration's use of force and economic coercion," said Susannah Patton, of the Australian Lowy Institute.

While the US had been suffering for several years, this year's Pew's survey shows a precipitous decline in the way the country is viewed. The United States median favourability view dropped to 36 from 48 per cent in 2025. Wrote Jin: "Most of the countries that viewed United States more positively than China were among China's traditional rivals in the Asia-Pacific Region like Japan and South Korea, or had leaders close to Trump like Isreal. Notably, respondents in Canada and Mexico – the United States' immediate neighbors and two of its closest allies – reported a grater affinity for China than the United States." The Pew poll also surveyed public opinion of Donald Trump in 36 countries and found that the United States involvement in military conflicts was a major factor in the decline in his global favourability. A median of 74 per cent of adults disapproved of the American president's handling of the Iran war and the Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip.

The conclusion I would draw from Pew's surveys is that while colour of the skin does matter in the way nations interact with another, it is not a defining characteristic. While people with the same skin colour relate well with one another, there can be also conflicts among them. That is certainly true in South and East Asia. For the brown nations of South Asia, religion rather than skin colour has proven to be a stronger factor in understanding conflicts among the countries in the region. Colonial India was partitioned on the basis of religion. There were brown people on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide.

Skin colour also affects domestic policies. That is the case, for instance in the United States, where the black, while emerging from slavery, are still discriminated against. They, unlike the white people, are slow to rise in the economic and political systems. Skin colour was also a factor in the breakup of original Pakistan when the country's eastern wing peopled by Bengalis fought for independence and, following a civil war, created a country of their own – Bangladesh. While Bengalis were citizens of Pakistan from 1947 to 1971, their relatively darker skin colour compared to the colours of Punjabis, Pathans and Baloch was an important source of discrimination against them. In India, skin colour is an important determinant of the prevalent caste system. Brahmins – the upper caste Hindus – are of lighter skin colour than the lower caste people who are mostly of darker hue.