Is Argentina an exceptionally racist country?

During the final stages of the 2026 World Cup, Argentina became the favourite villain of part of the international conversation. It was accused of benefiting from refereeing decisions—hence expressions such as “VAR-gentina” and “ArgenFIFA”—of playing dirty, and of mixing football with nationalism, as when the players displayed a banner referring to the Malvinas Islands after defeating England. These accusations were compounded by genuine racist incidents: a supporter insulted African American streamer IShowSpeed during the match against Cape Verde and, two years earlier, Enzo Fernández had broadcast an offensive chant mocking the African origins of several French players, for which he later apologised. During the final, Samuel L. Jackson shared a post describing Argentina as “one of the most racist countries in the world, if not the most racist”.

The reaction within Argentina was unusually broad. In a society deeply polarised around Javier Milei, progressives and government supporters agreed in rejecting that characterisation. There was certainly some national sensitivity involved: nobody likes being negatively defined from abroad. But there was also a widespread feeling that reprehensible incidents were being used to construct a caricature of 46 million people.

That racism exists in Argentina is beyond dispute. The question is whether it reaches exceptionally high levels. The available evidence suggests that it does not.

Argentina’s history is far from innocent. Slavery existed in the colonial Río de la Plata, although on a much smaller scale than in Brazil, the Caribbean or the United States. In 1813, the country introduced freedom of the womb, an advanced measure for its time that declared the children of enslaved women free, and by the mid-nineteenth century slavery had been abolished. The Argentine state also expanded violently into Indigenous territories. For decades, moreover, the elites promoted the image of a white and European nation, reducing the visibility of the country’s Indigenous, mixed-race and Afro-descendant population.

Argentina’s historical trajectory was nevertheless different from that of the United States or South Africa. After abolition, the country did not establish a legal system of segregation comparable to Jim Crow or apartheid, nor did it prohibit interracial marriage. Mixed unions were common, and successive waves of immigration were integrated relatively quickly. This did not eliminate racism, but it helped make racial boundaries less rigid.

Language reveals some of these particularities. The word negro can be used as a racial or class-based insult, especially when it associates poverty with marginality or dangerousness. But it can also be an ordinary and affectionate nickname between people of any skin colour. Context and intonation can completely change its meaning, something a literal translation can hardly capture.

Measuring and comparing discrimination is difficult. One possible approach is provided by the Integrated Values Surveys, which have collected information on values and attitudes in more than one hundred countries and territories over several decades. One question is direct: “Which groups would you not like to have as neighbours?”

Only 3% of Argentines say they would not want to live next to someone of another race. This is one of the ten lowest figures in the world, compared with 9% in Latin America, 12% in Italy, 13% in Spain and 15% globally. Moreover, Argentina has remained below 5% since the early 1980s.

The pattern is repeated for other groups. Only 4% would object to having an immigrant as a neighbour, 17 percentage points below the global median, a result consistent with a society shaped by large waves of immigration. This history also helps explain why only 2% reject having a neighbour of another religion. Just 8% would object to a homosexual neighbour, 30 percentage points below the global median and slightly below the figure for Western Europe. This is consistent with Argentina having been one of the first ten countries to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2010.

These questions measure declared tolerance. They may underestimate prejudices that people prefer not to admit and do not capture subtler forms of exclusion in employment, housing or encounters with the police. Even so, they contradict the image of a society with an extraordinarily high level of explicit hostility towards difference.

Other indicators point in the same direction. According to Latinobarómetro, 12% of Argentines identify racially defined groups as the most heavily discriminated against, compared with 20% across the region and 53% in Brazil. In Argentina, the group most frequently identified as discriminated against is the poor. Discrimination is therefore more often understood through the lens of class than race, although the two dimensions overlap: mixed-race people and those of Indigenous ancestry tend to have lower incomes than people with lighter skin.

Beyond perceptions, material outcomes also matter. The 2022 Census counted 46 million inhabitants, of whom 1.3 million identify as Indigenous or as descendants of Indigenous peoples, while around 300,000 identify as Afro-descendant. Among people of Indigenous ancestry, 51% live in households experiencing some form of material deprivation—related to housing or income—ten percentage points above the national average. Here, a clear structural gap emerges. Among the Afro-descendant population, by contrast, the proportion is 38%, three percentage points below the national average. This is a striking result: in many countries, Afro-descendant populations face considerable material disadvantages relative to the rest of society.

No single indicator can establish that a country is free of racism. Afro-descendant self-identification may be underestimated, and material deprivation does not capture every form of inequality. Argentina has prejudices, insults and disparities that it must confront and combat. The evidence, however, does not suggest that it is a global racist anomaly. Turning real problems into the defining essence of an entire country may work well on social media; it is far less useful for understanding it.