Typical Conversations with Ignorant Swedes

A discourse on infuriating conversations with the ignorant about matters of race, nationality and origins

© Zak Keith, 2009

It still surprises me to hear protests of “but you don’t look English!” when I say “I’m from England” in response to “where are you from?” questions. For people with Asian roots like me, “where are you from?” questions are as a rule followed by “but where are you really from?” questions. I’m all for friendly curiosity—I just have a problem with people not accepting my answer because of their own ignorance and preconceptions about race and nationality.

It’s the year 2009 fer chrissake! The Chinese have been in Britain for 323 years;[1] they settled the Americas along with the very first European pioneers.[2] Populations have been displaced and people have been moving around for centuries. The lines have been blurred for quite some time now—people can look one way and come from somewhere else. So get real. Get updated. Get used to it. You’ve got Korean-Swedes, Turkish-Germans, Algerian-French, Chinese-Cubans, Greek-Australians, White Kenyans, you name it—no sense in asking people for a full genealogical report and ancestral-migratory flowchart to satisfy your outdated notions of where people fit in the scheme of things!

Perhaps most people simply haven’t worked out their notions of nationality, race and culture, or realized that they can be very different and separable things. But is it not a mistake, consciously or unconsciously, to ascribe characteristics to people based on their ethnicity? Being on the constant receiving end of such interrogations, it’s easy to get the impression people are enquiring about race in an attempt to chart allegiances where none may exist; to assign one-dimensional solutions to the dilemma of seeing an Asian in the West: they have to belong to some other country, anywhere, just not here—this one is not one of ours!

To add insult to injury, these questions are usually asked by those who believe that they’re entitled to press the point because we should all know where we come from and be proud of our origins. Life would be simpler if we all had the answers they wanted to hear. What surprises me is how even my African-American friends get asked “but where are you from, from the beginning?” [sic] repeatedly, because Swedes will not rest until they get “Africa.” And get this: it is not a question they’d ever ask a caucasian American. While Swedes habitually criticize Americans about their low aptitude for world geography, they tend to exhibit a high social ineptitude for relating to the descendants of real-life black-American history, carelessly fishing with obtuse questions such as: “Which part of Africa are you from?”

Get a clue, Swedes—it’s you I’m talking about here!

Racial ignorance can be found everywhere, but Sweden—a country widely-regarded as being far ahead on humanist issues—has its own special brand, and Swedes lag far behind when it comes to awareness of their own racial stereotyping and insensitivity towards foreigners (and perceived foreigners). They tend to think of themselves as pretty-darn culturally-enlightened Embracers of Universalism—open and accepting of different races and cultures—yet they take racial ignorance to a whole new level, dishing out questions so obtuse you’d be hard pressed to find them anywhere else in the world.

To say that racism runs rife in Sweden would be to cry wolf. Racism exists, but is rare. Ignorance on the other hand—the precursor to racism and xenophobia—flourishes in Swedish culture. And racial discrimination, borne of some at least form of ignorance if not outright conscientious racism, most certainly does flourish in Sweden.

Discrimination, no matter how invisible, no matter how denied by Swedes, has very measurable results in Swedish society—it is said that the greatest concentration of qualified doctors in Sweden can be found not in Swedish hospitals but in Swedish taxis, because skilled foreigners who can't find jobs end up driving taxis. Due to the enormity of the problem, the European Union has commissioned special reports[4] and task forces to deal with nepotism and discrimination in Sweden. New laws were enacted only recently, to allow victims of racial discrimination proper legal recourse.

In my personal experience, all too often, Swedes will classify you according to your looks (ethnicity) and their preconceptions of where you belong based on your looks.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do like Swedes in general, or I would have left the country a long time ago. Swedes have a sincerity, innocence and general lack of guile like no other people. Unfortunately, Swedish child-like sincerity goes hand-in-hand with a naïvety that leaves them ill-equipped to deal with genuine race issues. In 1992, former Minister of Culture and Immigration Birgit Friggebo asked a crowd of angry demonstrators protesting against racism and a string of race murders in the immigrant district of Rinkeby to sing We Shall Overcome. She was met with stares of incredulity. (see youtube Swedish news clip of the incident)

Swedes often mean well, but they’ll stick their foot in their mouths, and unabashedly so, for no question is taboo for a Swede. Typically, if a Swedish person meets a disabled person in a wheelchair, he/she might begin to feel awkward (perhaps unfounded guilt about their own good health?), and rather than act like there are untouchable subjects between them, they’ll do the disabled person a “favor” by breaking the ice and getting straight to the point: “So what the hell happened to you? How’d you end up in a wheelchair?” Never mind that they might be tired of telling the same story over and over, the interrogator’s self-serving point is that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their story or feel they have anything to hide.

So by this token, anyone who looks like a foreigner ought to explain themselves too—if you’re different, it just comes with the territory. And Swedes will only get baffled if you let on that you are offended about it. It’s really no giant leap to believe Swedes subscribe to willful ignorance—the stubborn refusal to know that some questions about ethnicity and origins are inappropriate.

The problem may lie in the very notion of “embracing” itself. Embracing sounds good in theory, but its de facto application leaves much to be desired: it falls terribly short of genuine color-blindness and the genuine, innocent acceptance of people as people. Lofty Embracers are so busy going around classifying people as different types, as categories of people whom they are “embracing,” so that they seek out the differences rather than commonalities between. They throw a wrench into what would have been normal interaction, by accentuating the fact that there are differences between them and the people of other nationalities which they meet, just so they can highlight their own magnamity in overcoming or overlooking those differences: “Yes, I embrace you, despite you and your otherness, thanks to my great accepting, humanist outlook on life.”

And with Swedes, “embracing” is all too often a smoke-screen for aloofness and insensitivity, an opportunity to remind foreigners that they don’t quite belong. “Trivs du i Sverige?”—literally “are you thriving in Sweden”—is a common question innocently asked by Swedes to non-Swedes about how life is going for you in their country. It may be that quirky Swedish hospitality is behind it, but it’s one thing to ask a visiting tourist or temporary worker/sojourner if they're enjoying Stockholm, and quite another to ask this to people for whom Sweden is now home. On a closer look, Swedes don’t go around asking other Swedes if they are thriving in Sweden, and the question is not as innocent as it might appear. Although unspoken, the implication is clear: I am the default, you are the other; this is not your home, you are a foreigner, a guest in my country, a fish out of water—so are you coping alright?

Blame it on the jantelag or decades of socialist-middle-of-the-road conformist thinking if you will, but few Swedes have enough självdistans (self-detachment—considered a virtue by Swedes) to notice or even criticize the mindset of Swedish Centrism abounding in their own ranks. There is such a thing as ignorance about ignorance.

For years, journalist Stina Dabrowski was a fixture on Swedish television, interviewing anybody from Moammar al-Gaddafi to Clint Eastwood. Swedes watched on happily without so much as a whisper of protest, as their celebrated hostess found ingenious ways to embed insults into the questions she asked, demanding that anyone of an eccentric persuasion or non-conformist worldview defend and justify themselves. Her theme was consistent: we here in the center are normal and sensible, you out there on the fringes are not, so what’s your excuse for being such an inexcusable nut?

To be sure, we all have our share of ignorances and prejudices, and centrism and bullying by the default—the mainstream and majority—is a worldwide phenomenon not confined to Sweden alone. What strikes me however, is the magnitude of Swedish blindness towards their own racial profiling—many Swedes think in racial terms but they just don’t know it, and they’d never believe it if you told them so. What unsettles me is how backwards they can be on the subject of racial stereotyping: “It’s not stereotyping,” they’ll tell you, “it’s the acceptance that we are all different.”

So it follows that Swedes are unaware that they actually practice a very special kind of racial profiling and marginalization reserved for Asians in particular. During the ’60s nd ’70s, Sweden took on a large number of adoptees from Korea. Swedes have no trouble accepting Asian-looking Swedes as Swedish-but-adopted-from-Korea, or as “Korean adoptees who are practically Swedish.” But that less-than-gracious allowance for Asians in their midst stops there. As far as Swedes are concerned, the only business an Asian-looking person has of saying they are from Sweden or any European country for that matter, is if they admit to being adoptees. In their minds, an Asian-looking person cannot be “from” France, for example.

The questions that beg to be asked then are: at what point am I allowed to say I am British, or English, or that I’m from England? Will two, or three generations of ancestry suffice? At what point does an “immigrant” cross over to become a citizen? And is crossing over or even Swedishness a reasonable goal?

As Neil Gotanda explains it, Asians are especially subject to Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome:

Throughout America’s history, Asian Americans have been conceived, treated, and portrayed as perpetual foreigners; inassimilable and inherently foreign regardless of citizenship or duration of residence in America.

Add to that Asian-Europeans or British-born Chinese!

A consensus has developed that discrimination on a basis of race is improper—and Swedes blind to their own prejudice will swear that they never discriminate according to race. A consensus remains, however, that discrimination of the basis of citizenship is proper: citizens may enter the country; foreigners must seek permission; some will even contend that the sovereignty of a nation cannot exist without a policy that favors citizens and disenfranchises aliens.[3] The crux of Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome however, is race and not alienage either by definition or by proxy. Asian racial background is correlated to foreign status. The perpetual-foreigner assumption is that Asians are sojourners, visitors and/or guests who cannot overcome an inherent alien status.

Asians and Eurasians have to explain and justify themselves for being in the West, often much more so than those of African decent. Even ignorant Swedes who allow for the possibility that there is such a thing as African Americans, will often not be inclined to accept the possibility of Asian Americans, much less the existence of Asian Europeans. An “invisible” immigrant such as a Pollack “fresh off the boat” who has the “right looks” will not be interrogated in the same manner by perfect strangers about where they are really, really, really from, from the beginning, or originally.

There is such a thing as patronizing curiosity. In my opinion, insisting that Asians explain themselves is a form of bullying. It is the majority marginalizing the minority, reminding them that they don’t belong.

What are the chances a Caucasian who says he is English will get asked where he is really from and where his parents are from? Ask, and the chances are the “Englishman” might have a great-grandfather from France, a grandmother from Ireland and some Italian blood thrown in—but he’ll still never be subject to the same lifelong botheration of explaining himself to perfect strangers and never to their satisftaction.

FOOTNOTES:

1. The Chinese in Britain — History Timeline
2. The first Chinese to settle in the Americas arrived on Spanish and British ships in the 1500s and 1700s, centuries before the Gold Rush. See: Early Chinese settlers in the Americas
3. “Indeed, serious theorists contend that the sovereignty of the nation and the meaning of citizenship status—ideas that undoubtedly have real consequence as matters of law and culture—cannot exist without a distinction between citizens and aliens that favors the former and literally disenfranchises the latter.” Don T. Nakanishi & James S. Lai: Asian American Politics: Law, Participation, and Policy
4. Responding to Racism in Sweden—a report by the European Network Against Racism, commissioned by the European Union

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