Hey, I'm building something that aims to answer exactly these kinds of questions. It's still early in development, right now there is actually a site-breaking bug causing a ton of pages to timeout :( , but I'm hopeful that in a year from now you'll be able to find answers to all sorts of questions like that. It's called www.istorical.com, and it's a site dedicated to sharing information about what it's like to live in any city or country. It's got user-submitted q&a about what it's like to live there, user-submitted videos showing what a city or country is like, and very soon it will have user-submitted AMA's from travelers, expats, and just people who live in a city or country. I haven't quite taken off my dev hat and put on the marketing hat yet, but look forward to your wish being granted (hopefully).

Relevant (but unanswered, unfortunately) questions on the site I'm building:

http://www.istorical.com/countries/china/questions/57724

http://www.istorical.com/countries/china/questions/57733

I'm interested. Make sure to see color.

"how black people are seen" - i don't think it can be answered by one number on the scale from 1 to 10. For example, Russians are pretty racist, nationalistic chauvinistic, antisemitic ... you name it, basically Equal Opportunity Haters ... and there are a lot of disrespectful jokes about black people as well. On the other side - we drank a lot with the black students we had at our University and at other places and the girls liked them as well.

>then find out that your experience there is not going to be like your friend's was.

yep, he may be a cool guy and you're a party pooper or vise verse :)

Reminds me of this old joke:

A CIA spy is on his first day scouting Moscow. Fluent in Russian, he is confident of blending into the crowd. First, he stops at a store to get an apple. The lady there gives him a big smile, "Morning Mr American, how can I help you?" Shocked, he quietly buys an apple. Next stop, an old lady on a park bench. "Morning ma'am, can I have the time please?" "Sure, Mr American, it's 9.15." He's really worried. Is his disguise that thin? He meets a cop and asks directions. Having received the usual "Certainly Mr American, it's the third block on your left," he asks, "Excuse me, how do you know I'm from the US?" "That's easy," replies the policeman, "you're black."

Yep, many years ago a friend who just moved to VA near Langley was a bit surprised seeing first time a couple of black guys in suits shopping in specialized Russian food store and speaking perfect Russian :)

I'm sure a few linear-esque metrics could be teased out, but yeah, it's more complex than that.

I'm definitely a party pooper:) I'm often suprised by the amount or racism that can be directed at you in places where there aren't any black people to be angry at, though.

>I'm often suprised by the amount or racism that can be directed at you in places where there aren't any black people to be angry at, though.

Don't mistake xenophobia where the "other" at that given moment and place just happens to be, for example, a black with racism toward blacks.