Tag: danish denial

Dindler, Camilla & Bolette B. Blaagaard. The colour-line of journalism: Exploring racism as a boundary object in journalistic practice and principles. (2021). [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Dindler, Camilla & Bolette B. Blaagaard. The colour-line of journalism: Exploring racism as a boundary object in journalistic practice and principles. Journalistica, 15(1), 2021, 90-113.

This article argues that Danish journalistic boundary producing practices and principles uphold a representation of racial disparity. Based on critical theories of race and racism in journalism and a boundary work framework, we conduct a discursive analysis of two collective case studies that encompass 56 articles and 23 Facebook posts. Focusing mainly on 1) the construction of knowledge about potential racism, 2) who are positioned as authorities on the topic of racism, and 3) who are missing among the potential actors in the stories, we identify meta-journalistic discourses and the (re)establishment of journalistic principles and practices. We conclude that journalistic norms and practices, for now, withstand the challenges posed by minority media’s call for the recognition of race as structure by applying discursive strategies of firstly rejecting racism as structure and secondly asserting principles and practices of specific kinds of objectivity, utilising, for instance, elite sources.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.7146/journalistica.v15i1.124927

Brøndum, Tine. “The curse of the refugee”: Narratives of slow violence, marginalization and non-belonging in the Danish welfare state. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Brøndum, Tine. “The curse of the refugee”: Narratives of slow violence, marginalization and non-belonging in the Danish welfare state. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 96–112.

Drawing on narrative interviews with people who have recently or in the past fled to Denmark, this article examines experiences of being cast as refugees within the Danish asylum and integration bureaucracy. The analysis is situated within a social context formed simultaneously by Nordic exceptionalism and racial colour-blindness, and by increasing restrictions within Danish asylum and integration policy. Within this context, the article analyses narrative accounts of structural violence and racialization within three central sites of refugee management: namely the reception and asylum camps, encounters with municipal integration workers, and in contexts of schooling and employment. The analysis conveys intersubjective perspectives on how being labelled as a ‘refugee’ involves being racialized, managed and controlled and it argues that such forms of legally-sanctioned control measures can be understood as a slow violence that harms the lives of those seeking protection in Denmark. Finally, the article discusses how people labelled as ‘refugees’ respond to and oppose experiences of racism and control, and how such responses are often silenced in ways that further legitimize racism.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/141131

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. Black Racial Isolation: Understanding African Diaspora Subjectivity in Post-Racial Denmark. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. Black Racial Isolation: Understanding African Diaspora Subjectivity in Post-Racial Denmark, 2023, Dissertation, UC Berkeley.

This is an Afrofeminist Cultural Studies analysis of blackness and belonging in Denmark. The study is situated within African Diaspora Studies, specifically the theoretical branches in and of Europe. Simultaneously constructed as marginal to hegemonic Europeanness and dominant conceptions of blackness, I seek to carve out space for Afropean and European Black perspectives. With attention to genealogical distinctions between European-based Afrofeminisms and Black Feminisms of the USA, this dissertation is a contribution to a grounded theory of blackness in a larger European context. Specifically, this is a step towards writing the much under-theorized conditions of the African diasporas in the Nordics into the archives (McEachrane 2016).The study centers first-person narratives. I focus on first-generation African diaspora Dan-ish people, i.e., those with experiences of being raised and socialized in Denmark while Black as the first in a family. Situation myself as a researcher within this very life experience, I examine how others have navigated that experience before the era of the Internet and with a scarcity of racial mirroring. But particularly, I examine the condition of being racialized as Black in an alleged post-racial European context, dominated by a ‘raceless’ discourse of Denmark and its ‘other’ (El-Tayeb 2011; Boulila 2019). And more precisely within a regional discourse of Nordic Exceptionalism (Habel 2011). Positioned as apparently a paradox within an exclusive nationalist narrative, Afropean existence becomes unspeakable and Black Danish people constructed as always already foreigners, having just arrived. Part of the Black Danish experience, as across the Nordic region, is thus characterized by a lack of language to name one’s reality (Adeniji 2016; Diallo 2022). And importantly, a language to understand and resist racism, and to develop a political consciousness (Essed 1991; Kelekay 2019). I analyze how these circumstances affect Black Danish people’s subjectivity. The study’s first chapter builds on a reading of Crucian-Danish Victor Cornelins’ autobiography From St. Croix to Nakskov from 1976. This is supplemented by material from the Nakskov Local History Archives in Denmark. Here, I offer feminist analyses centered in African diasporic care and consideration of historical representations of blackness in Denmark as well as archival silences. Reading Cornelins as an early theorist of blackness in Denmark, the contours of a primary formative condition emerge: racial isolation. The second and third chapters are based on original data from semi-structured interviews during a seven-month stay in Copenhagen in 2020-2021. The second chapter sketches out the scattered collective of a post-WWII generation of so-called ‘brown babies.’ Being of Black American and white German parentage, thousands of individuals were deemed ‘better off’ outside of Germany due to their blackness and ‘mixedness.’ At the beginning of a post-racial discourse in Europe and a decolonization moment globally, a generation of ‘brown’ children were adopted into the intimate sphere of the post-racial Danish nation-state. An obscured, misrepresented part of Danish history, this chapter seeks to humanize people of this generation and identify their agency in constructing themselves as whole. The final chapter gives context to the current moment and growing up Black in Denmark. Imagined as outside of the Danish nation, yet also outside of dominant immigration discourse, analyzing the particularity of racialization as Black proves highly pertinent. The taxing reality of experiencing racism in a post-racialist culture become clear, especially the fact of being the only one in many social contexts. Yet this chapter also illuminates people’s ambivalence, disidentification, and dissociation from concepts of collective blackness or minoritarian solidarity. There is a complex relationship between assuming one’s own racialized social position as Black and understanding oneself as Danish. Black racial isolation runs through the three chapters as a common condition for African diasporic Danish people who have come of age in Denmark between 1905 and 2021. I therefore of-fer Black racial isolation as a core concept to better understand how Danish Black people make sense of themselves and their relationship to African diasporas and Black (political) collectivity. As a Black experience the Danish is version an articulation of racialization within a Westernized con-text historically shaped through binaries of Black/white. What sets this apart from other theorizations of blackness in the West, is that it experienced alone, rather than in community. My findings suggest that such isolation can results in internalization of binaries and a splitting of the self. In conclusion, I meditate on conditions for creating connection – with self and others – as a path to-ward sustainable, humanizing futures for Danish African diasporic blackness and belonging. As such, this dissertation contributes original, grounded theory of blackness, race, and racialization in Europe with deep appreciation for Afrofeminist and decolonial feminist genealogies from which this study could grow.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qk0z1fm

Halberg, Nina, Trine S. Larsen & Mari Holen. Ethnic minority patients in healthcare from a Scandinavian welfare perspective: The case of Denmark. (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Halberg, Nina, Larsen, Trine S., & Holen, Mari. Ethnic minority patients in healthcare from a Scandinavian welfare perspective: The case of Denmark. Nursing Inquiry, 29(1), 2022.

The Scandinavian welfare states are known for their universal access to healthcare; however, health inequalities affecting ethnic minority patients are prevalent. Ethnic minority patients’ encounters with healthcare systems are often portrayed as part of a system that represents objectivity and neutrality. However, the Danish healthcare sector is a political apparatus that is affected by policies and conceptualisations. Health policies towards ethnic minorities are analysed using Bacchi’s policy analysis, to show how implicit problem representations are translated from political and societal discourses into the Danish healthcare system. Our analysis shows that health policies are based on different ideas of who ethnic minority patients are and what kinds of challenges they entail. Two main issues are raised: First, ethnic minorities are positioned as bearers of ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’. These concepts of ‘othering’ become both explanations for and the cause of inappropriate healthcare behaviour. Second, the Scandinavian welfare states are known for their solidarity, collectivism, equality and tolerance, also grounded in a postracial, colour-blind and noncolonial past ideology that forms the societal self-image. Combined with the ethical and legal responsibility of healthcare professionals to treat all patients equally, our findings indicate little leeway for addressing the discrimination experienced by ethnic minority patients.

PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ftr/10.1111/nin.12457

Engebretsen, Elisabeth L. & Mia Liinason. Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe: Critical Essays on Knowledge, Inequality and Belonging. (2023). [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Engebretsen, Elisabeth L. & Mia Liinason. Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe: Critical Essays on Knowledge, Inequality and Belonging (1st ed.). 2023. Routledge.

Interdisciplinary in perspective, this book explores contemporary struggles around ‘identity politics’ in Europe, offering a unique glimpse into contemporary tensions and paradoxes surrounding identities, belonging, exclusions and their deep-seated gendered, colonial and racist legacies. With a particular focus on the Nordic region, it provides insights into the ways in which people who find themselves in minoritized positions struggle against multiple injustices. Through a series of case studies documenting counter-struggles against racist, colonialist, sexist forms of discrimination and exclusion, Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe asks how the paradigm and politics of the welfare state operate to discriminate against the most marginalized, by instating a naturalized hierarchy of human-ness. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race, gender, colonialism and postcolonialism, citizenship and belonging. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction Transforming identities in contemporary Europe By Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, Mia Liinason 

“Welcome to the most privileged, most xenophobic country in the world”. Affective figurations of white Danishness in the making of a Danish citizen By Linda Lapiņa 

Educational challenges for Nordic exceptionalism Epistemic injustice in the absence of antiracist education By Kris Clarke, Manté Vertelyté 

Autobiographical flesh Understanding Western notions of humanity through the life and selected writings of Una Marson (1905–1965) By Jéssica Nogueira Varela 

‘It’s our bodies, we are the experts!’ Countering pathologisation, gate-keeping and Danish exceptionalism through collective trans knowledges, coalition-building and insistence By Nico Miskow Friborg 

Gayness between nation builders and money makers From ideology to new essentialism By Anna-Maria Sörberg 

(Not) in the name of gender equality Migrant women, empowerment, employment, and minority women’s organizations By Christel Stormhøj 

‘Home is where the cat is’ The here-there of queer (un)belonging By Ramona Dima, Simona Dumitriu 

The poetics of climate change and politics of pain Sámi social media activist critique of the Swedish state By Akvilė Buitvydaitė, Elisabeth L. Engebretsen 

Varieties of exceptionalism A conversation By Selin Çağatay, Mia Liinason, Olga Sasunkevich

PDF: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003245155

Kammersgaard, Tobias, Thomas Friis Søgaard, Torsten Kolind, and Geoffrey Hunt, ‘Most Officers Are More or Less Colorblind’: Police Officers’ Reflections on the Role of Race and Ethnicity in Policing. (2022)

~ mortenstinus

Kammersgaard, Tobias, Thomas Friis Søgaard, Torsten Kolind, and Geoffrey Hunt, ‘Most Officers Are More or Less Colorblind’: Police Officers’ Reflections on the Role of Race and Ethnicity in Policing, Race and Justice, 2022, 21533687221127445

Several studies worldwide have demonstrated that ethnic minorities are more likely to be stopped, questioned and searched by the police. In this paper, we explore how police officers themselves discuss and make sense of ethnic disparities in police stops. Based on interviews with 25 police officers in two police precincts in Denmark the paper illustrates how officers actively reflect on the (un)importance of ethnicity for policing. Findings point to how the officers both rejected that ethnicity directly mattered for who they chose to stop, as well as how they offered alternative and indirect explanations for why ethnic minorities were stopped more often.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/21533687221127445

Wagner, Thorsten. ‘Jøder og andre danskere. Den nyere antisemitismeforskning og dens implikationer for dansk historieskrivning: en forskningsoversigt’. (2001) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Wagner, Thorsten. ‘Jøder og andre danskere. Den nyere antisemitismeforskning og dens implikationer for dansk historieskrivning: en forskningsoversigt’. Nordisk judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, 2, Sept. 2001, pp. 157–192.

Due to the national narrative of successful integration of Danish Jews and their heroic rescue from Nazi persecution, a critical investigation of the relationship between Jews and Non-Jews in 19th and 20th century Danish society has been neglected until recently. The article discusses recent developments in the field of antisemitism as well as a new appreciation of the cultural dimension of anti-Jewish stereotyping have been instrumental in a new understanding of anti-semitism. Together with a growing awareness of the interrelationship between the construction of the nation and the politics of exclusion, these trends have created new grounds for historical research. It is argued that this new generation of research also calls for a rewriting of Danish history “from the margins”: The liberal democratic political culture that informed the formation of the Danish nation state did not do without exclusionist practices-on the contrary, it implied a rejection of cultural or ethnic heterogeneity. Instead of exonerating Danish antisemitism by self-serving comparisons, a fresh view on Danish-Jewish relations in modern times promises new insights into the development of Danish national identity, oscillating between inclusion and exclusion.

doi:10.30752/nj.69586.

PDF: https://journal.fi/nj/article/view/69586.

McEachrane, Michael, editor. Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe. (2014)

~ mortenstinus

McEachrane, Michael, editor. Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogenously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics?  This text is a must read for anyone interested in issues of race in the Nordic region and Europe writ large. As Paul Gilroy writes in his foreword, it is a book that ‘should be studied with care and profit inside the Nordic countries and also outside them by the broader international readership that has been established around the study of racism and “critical race theory”.’ 

Contents

Foreword—Paul Gilroy.  A

Introduction —Michael McEachrane 

Part I: The Nation 

1. Imagining Blackness at the Margins: Race and Difference in Iceland —Kristín Loftsdóttir 

2. ‘Struggling to Be Recognized as Belonging to the Fauna of Norway’: On Being Black Norwegian Women—Madeleine Kennedy-Macfoy 

3. The Midnight Sun Never Sets: An Email Conversation About Jazz, Race and National Identity in Denmark, Norway and Sweden—Cecil Brown, Anne Dvinge, Petter Frost Fadnes, Johan Fornäs, Ole Izard Høyer, Marilyn Mazur, Michael McEachrane and John Tchicai 

Part II: Racism 

4. There’s a White Elephant in the Room: Equality and Race in (Northern) Europe—Michael McEachrane 

5. Racism Is No Joke: A Swedish Minister and a Hottentot Venus Cake—An Email Conversation—Beth Maina Ahlberg, Claudette Carr, Madubuko Diakité, Fatima El-Tayeb, Tobias Hübinette, Momodou Jallow, Victoria Kawesa, Michael McEachrane, Utz McKnight, Anders Neergaard, Shailja Patel, Kitimbwa Sabuni and Minna Salami 

6. Being and Becoming Mixed Race, Black, Swedish and a Nomadic Subject—Anna Adeniji 

7. Bertrand Besigye’s Civilization Critique: An Aesthetics of Blackness in Norway—Helena Karlsson 

8. Two Poems by Bertrand Besigye: (i) How A Black African Orders Black Coffee (To Barack Hussein Obama); (ii) You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down. Or Black Hail Over All of West Side (Translated by John Irons)—Bertrand Besigye 

Part III: Diaspora 

9. Talking Back: Voices from the African Diaspora in Finland—Anna Rastas 

10. Den Sorte: Nella Larsen and Denmark—Martyn Bone 

11. A Horn of Africa in Northern Europe—An Email Conversation—Abdalla Duh, Mohamed Husein Gaas, Abdalla Gasimelseed, Amel Gorani, Nauja Kleist, Anne Kubai, Michael McEachrane, Saifalyazal Omar, Tsegaye Tegenu and Marja Tiilikain.

https://www.routledge.com/Afro-Nordic-Landscapes-Equality-and-Race-in-Northern-Europe/McEachrane/p/book/9781138207110

Thisted, Kirsten. ‘Hvor Dannebrog engang har vajet i mer end 200 Aar’. (2008) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Thisted, Kirsten. ‘Hvor Dannebrog engang har vajet i mer end 200 Aar’. Tranquebar Initiativets Skriftserie, vol. 2, 2008, p. 55.

Artiklen fokuserer på  Sophie  Petersens Danmarks  gamle Tropekolonier, 1946: Et værk som spidsformulerer fortællingen om Danmark som et gennemført humanistisk og retfærdighedshung-rende lilleputland, der ironisk nok ofrer sine stormagts-potentialer netop for retfærdighedens skyld, men af den grund vinder så meget desto større ære på det etiske og moralske plan. Fortællingen lader til først at finde sin færdige formulering efter salget af den sidste tropekoloni, måske som en form for forklaring og kompensation  herpå,  men  får  samtidig  en  afgørende  rolle  i  Danmarks legitimering af kravet på (hele) Grønland, ligesom fortællingen i 1940-erne  og  50 erne  får  yderligere  relevans  i  forbindelse  med Anden  Verdenskrig  og  den  efterfølgende  afkolonisering. 

Sophie Petersens værk blev modtaget med begejstring både af anmeldere og  læsere  og  er  citeret  igen  og  igen,  ikke  blot  i  de  følgende  år, blandt andet i et værk som Vore gamle Tropekolonier (Brøndsted red.,  1952-53),  men  også  i  nutiden,  hvor  den  ideale  nationale fortælling  fortsat  skriver  sig  igennem,  selv  i  tilfælde  hvor  den eksplicitte  hensigt  ellers  har  været  at  kreere  en  modfortælling. Fænomenet søges forklaret ud fra teorier om nation, erindring og fortælling,  ligesom  det  diskuteres,  hvorvidt  en  fortsat  interesse i  de  tidligere  kolonier  alene  skal  ses  som  udslag  af  en  ”postkolonial  melankoli”,  som  reaktion  mod  globalisering,  migration  og ændrede geopolitiske og racemæssige magtbalancer, eller om der måske (også) kan være tale om en mere positiv bestræbelse på udsyn og møder over grænser.

PDF: https://natmus.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Editor/natmus/forskning/dokumenter/Tranquebar/Skriftserie/Tranquebar_Initiativets_Skriftserie_nr_02_2008.pdf.

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk, 2017.

 Indhold:

Myter og realiteter i Jomfruøernes historie af Arnold Highfield 

Dansk Vestindiens helte og heltinder af Rikke Lie Halberg & Bertha Rex Coley 

Toldbodens nye dronning – den danske kolonialismes im/materielle aftryk af Emilie Paaske Drachmann 

Tingene sat på plads: Om afrikaneres bidrag til etableringen af byen Christiansted på St. Croix af George F. Tyson 

Museale formidlinger af fortiden som kolonimagt på danske og britiske museer af Vibe Nielsen 

 ”Let’s Put the Background to the Foreground!” – nostalgi, turisme og iscenesættelse af en dansk kolonial fortid på de tidligere vestindiske øer af Pernille Østergaard Hansen 

I kølvandet – levedygtighed og koloniale økologier ved havnen på St. Thomas af Nathalia Brichet & Frida Hastrup 

Kærligheden og de druknedes land – interview med Tiphanie Yanique af Astrid Nonbo Andersen & Sine Jensen Smed 

https://www.slagmark.dk/slagmark75

Abstracts: https://www.slagmark.dk/abstracts-75  

Forord: https://www.slagmark.dk/koloniale-aftryk

Hervik, Peter. ‘The Danish Cultural World of Unbridgeable Differences’. (2004)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter. ‘The Danish Cultural World of Unbridgeable Differences’. Ethnos, vol. 69, no. 2, Routledge, June 2004, pp. 247–267.

This article looks at the contestation of foreign presence in Denmark from the perspective of popular consciousness. I infer the cultural world of Danish host and non-Danish guests from a pool of 55 in-depth interviews about multicultural issues. In this culturally figured world the guests are constructed as widely different cultural bearers who refuse to downplay their cultural markers, therefore upsetting the guests. According to this reasoning, the racial outburst of the hosts is caused solely by the unruly guests. Blaming the guests for creating racist responses, I contend, can best be understood as a naturalization of racism. This denial of racism in the popular sphere builds on the same culturalist construction of unbridgeable differences between a ‘we-group’ of ‘alike’ (or invisible) Danes and a visible ‘out group’ that dominates both popular and political understandings of immigrants and refugees in Denmark in the end of the 1990s.

doi:10.1080/0014184042000212885.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184042000212885.

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda, Anne Ríos-Rojas, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Whose Race Problem? Tracking Patterns of Racial Denial in US and European Educational Discourses on Muslim Youth’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda, Anne Ríos-Rojas, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Whose Race Problem? Tracking Patterns of Racial Denial in US and European Educational Discourses on Muslim Youth’. Curriculum Inquiry, vol. 47, no. 3, Routledge, 2017, pp. 310–335.

In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators ‘in schools’ in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the languages and practices of national belonging and citizenship. Comparing ethnographic case studies in the United States, Denmark and Spain, the authors trace the nationalist storylines that serve to frame Muslim youth as particular kinds of racialized and ‘impossible subjects’. Across national contexts, the authors document similar, often almost verbatim, stories that educators narrated about the disjuncture between liberal ideals of the nation, and what they imagined to be true of Muslim im/migrant youth. They theorize that, despite differences in US and European approaches to immigration, there are consonances in the ways that Muslims are positioned as racialized Others across liberal democracies because of the very ways that western liberalism has constructed notions of individualism and tolerance. These seemingly benign discourses of liberalism in schools provide the conditions of possibility for schools’ imposition of exclusionary nationalist values while keeping a safe distance from charges of racism. Thus, we show how liberalism’s imbrication with nationalism, and its promotion of goals conceived of as inherently humanist and universal, occlude the racial logics that ultimately restrict human freedom for Muslim youth.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03626784.2017.1324736?journalCode=rcui20

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘Ideal Liberal Subjects and Muslim “Others”: Liberal Nationalism and the Racialization of Muslim Youth in a Progressive Danish School’. (2019) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘Ideal Liberal Subjects and Muslim “Others”: Liberal Nationalism and the Racialization of Muslim Youth in a Progressive Danish School’. Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 22, no. 2, Routledge, Mar. 2019, pp. 285–300.

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.

doi:10.1080/13613324.2018.1468744.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/36581871/Ideal_liberal_subjects_and_Muslim_Others_liberal_nationalism_and_the_racialization_of_Muslim_youth_in_a_progressive_Danish_school

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, Kristina Weibel, and Kathrine Vitus. ‘“There Is No Racism Here”: Public Discourses on Racism, Immigrants and Integration in Denmark’. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, Kristina Weibel, and Kathrine Vitus. ‘“There Is No Racism Here”: Public Discourses on Racism, Immigrants and Integration in Denmark’. Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 51, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 51–68.

Jensen, Weibel and Vitus’s article critically discusses contemporary Danish policies aimed at the elimination of ethnoracial discrimination, drawing on policy analyses and qualitative interviews with local and national authorities in Denmark. It illustrates how questions of discrimination and racism are marginalized and de-legitimized within the dominant integration discourse, resulting in the marginalization of anti-racism in policymaking. The side-stepping of racism is being naturalized in public policies through strategies of denial and by addressing discrimination as a product of ignorance and individual prejudice rather than as embedded in social structures. The authors examine how immigration, integration and (anti-)racism as concepts and phenomena are understood and addressed in Danish public policies and discourses. Despite denials of racism in Denmark, Jensen, Weibel and Vitus show that, based on re-definitions of identities and relations, it continues to exist and is evident in public debates and policies on immigration and integration.

doi:10.1080/0031322X.2016.1270844.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2016.1270844.

Lagermann, Laila Colding. ‘Racialized Subjects in a Colour Blind School’. (2013) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lagermann, Laila Colding. ‘Racialized Subjects in a Colour Blind School’. International Journal on School Disaffection, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 73–89.

In this paper I examine processes of racialization in a school in Copenhagen, Denmark. On the basis of the data produced in 2009, which is part of a larger study, I investigate themes of race as a difference-making and constituting category for subjective (human) becoming  and  racialization  as  contingent  and  negotiated  processes  (Butler,  1997). As part of the analyses I will discuss how difference and differentiation with regard to race and racialization is related to a denial of particularity as much as it can be a denial of universality (Hage, 2010), and further, how racialization intersects with marginalization.

doi:10.18546/IJSD.10.1.05.

PDF: https://edu.au.dk/fileadmin/edu/Forskning/KULT/Racialised_Subjects_in_a_Colour_Blind_School.pdf.

Muasya, Gabriella Isadora Nørgaard, Noella Chituka Birisawa, and Tringa Berisha. ‘Denmark’s Innocent Colonial Narrative’. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Muasya, Gabriella Isadora Nørgaard, Noella Chituka Birisawa, and Tringa Berisha. ‘Denmark’s Innocent Colonial Narrative’. Kult, vol. 15, 2018, pp. 56–69.

This paper analyses the multifaceted expressions of white innocence in the educational game Historiedysten(2016) published by Danish Broadcasting Corporation(DR) in collaboration with The Museum of National History Frederiksborg Castle. This case study of Historiedystendisplays how a racial grammar embedded in the Danish physical and cultural archives continue to shape and (re)producea restricted, innocent Danish self-representation, as well as a dominant model of ‘thinking, feeling and speaking’ about the Danish colonial history.1The paper concludes that colonial power relations continue to transcend time and space via Historiedysten, proving that the downplaying of violence, oppression, and legitimisation of racism is intrinsic to Danish white innocence in the colonial narrative.

http://postkolonial.dk/kult-15-racism-in-denmark/

PDF: http://postkolonial.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/8_Berisha-Birisawa-Muasya_final.pdf.

Rud, Søren. Colonialism in Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Rud, Søren. Colonialism in Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

This book explores how the Danish authorities governed the colonized population in Greenland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Two competing narratives of colonialism dominate in Greenland as well as Denmark. One narrative portrays the Danish colonial project as ruthless and brutal extraction of a vulnerable indigenousness people; the other narrative emphasizes almost exclusively the benevolent aspects of Danish rule in Greenland. Rather than siding with one of these narratives, this book investigates actual practices of colonial governance in Greenland with an outlook to the extensive international scholarship on colonialism and post-colonialism. The chapters address the intimate connections between the establishment of an ethnographic discourse and the colonial techniques of governance in Greenland. Thereby the book provides important nuances to the understanding of the historical relationship between Denmark and Greenland and links this historical trajectory to the present negotiations of Greenlandic identity.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319461571

Sandset, Tony. Color That Matters : A Comparative Approach to Mixed Race Identity and Nordic Exceptionalism. (2018)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Sandset, Tony. Color That Matters : A Comparative Approach to Mixed Race Identity and Nordic Exceptionalism. Routledge, 2018.

This book examines the ways in which mixed ethnic identities in Scandinavia are formed along both cultural and embodied lines, arguing that while the official discourses in the region refer to a “post-racial” or “color blind” era, color still matters in the lives of people of mixed ethnic descent. Drawing on research from people of mixed ethnic backgrounds, the author offers insights into how color matters and is made to matter and into the ways in which terms such as “ethnic” and “ethnicity” remain very much indebted to their older, racialized grammar.

Color that Matters moves beyond the conventional Anglo-American focus of scholarship in this field, showing that while similarities exist between the racial and ethnic discourses of the US and UK and those found in the Nordic region, Scandinavia, and Norway in particular, manifests important differences, in part owing to a tendency to view itself as exceptional or outside the colonial heritage of race and imperialism. Presenting both a contextualization of racial discourses since World War II based on documentary analysis and new interview material with people of mixed ethnic backgrounds, the book acts as a corrective to the blind spot within Scandinavian research on ethnic minorities, offering a new reading of race for the Nordic region that engages with the idea that color has been emptied of legitimate cultural content.

doi:10.4324/9781315169040.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/color-matters-tony-sandset/10.4324/9781315169040.

Skadegård, M. C. ‘With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?: Structural Discrimination and Good Intentions in Danish Everyday Contexts’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Skadegård, M. C. ‘With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?: Structural Discrimination and Good Intentions in Danish Everyday Contexts’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 4, Dec. 2017, p. 214.

In this article, I address structural discrimination, an under-represented area of study in Danish research. In particular, I introduce the concepts of microdiscrimination and benevolent discrimination. These are proposed as two ways of articulating particular and opaque forms of structural racial discrimination, which have become normalised in everyday Danish (and other) contexts. I present and discuss discrimination as it surfaces in data from my empirical studies of discrimination in Nordic (Danish) contexts. These studies underscore how everyday assumptions and norms contribute to discriminatory practices in particular ways. The article, in introducing the terms micro-discrimination and benevolent discrimination, hopes to identify and acknowledge attitudes and behaviours that fall outside the purview of everyday understandings of discrimination and racism. In addition, it is my hope that these terms can be of use with regard to addressing and reducing challenges within antidiscrimination and social exclusion frameworks.

doi:10.1515/njmr-2017-0033.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/287475396/_1799649X_Nordic_Journal_of_Migration_Research_With_Friends_Like_These_Who_needs_Enemies_.pdf.

Stawski, Scott. Denmark’s Veiled Role in Slavery in the Americas: The Impact of the Danish West Indies on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. (2020) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Stawski, Scott. Denmark’s Veiled Role in Slavery in the Americas: The Impact of the Danish West Indies on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Sept. 2020.

he legacy of Danish participation in the transatlantic slave trade is presented as that of a minor player in the practice who had an oversized positive influence on abolishing the slave trade. The current historiography estimates that Danish participation was less than 1% of the 12 million enslaved Africans transported to the Americas from 1501 to 1880. Through various grants of rights and privileges, Danish slaves were provided a better quality of life than their counterparts. In 1792, Denmark became the first colonial power to abolish their participation by announcing an end to the practice in 1803 and setting a standard for all colonial powers to follow. The results of the research and reported in this thesis shows this historiography to be inaccurate as to historical quantification and misleading as to historical legacy. New data is available on the scale of Danish participation. By applying a more informed paradigm to the empirical data, Danish participation in the transatlantic slave trade is six times the scale of what has been historically reported making Denmark the fifth largest slave-trading nation within the Americas. This new historical quantification coupled with an analysis of the underlying rationale for Denmark’s abolition of their participation in the slave trade suggests a different historical legacy for Denmark than what is currently promulgated.

PDF: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37365426.

Hervik, Peter, and Rikke E. Jørgensen. ‘Danske benægtelser af racisme’. (2002) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter, and Rikke E. Jørgensen. ‘Danske benægtelser af racisme’. Sosiologi i Dag, vol. 32, no. 4, Novus forlag, 2002, pp. 83–102.

Tonen i den danske debat før sidste folketingsvalg, den 20. november, er i udlandet blevet kaldt for skinger og med stærke racistiske undertoner. Danske politikere har taget skarpt afstand fra denne karakteristik og argumenteret, at i Danmark har vi blot haft en åben debat, hvad andre lande ikke har. Imiderltid viser forfatterne til denne artikel. at fremtrædende danske politikere, magtfulde forskere og den brede danske befolkning benytter en argumentationsstrategi og baggrundsforståelse, der systematisk benægter eksistensen af racisme og diskrimination i Danmark.

https://vbn.aau.dk/da/publications/danske-ben%C3%A6gtelser-af-racisme

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342840575_Danske_benaegtelser_af_racisme/link/5f086fe5a6fdcc4ca45bcd98/download.

Yael Enoch. ‘The Intolerance of a Tolerant People: Ethnic Relations in Denmark’. (1994) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Yael Enoch. ‘The Intolerance of a Tolerant People: Ethnic Relations in Denmark’. Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 1994, p. 282.

The Danes have traditionally seen themselves as an enlightened and tolerant people, regarding with contempt those who, like many white Americans or South Africans, hold negative attitudes towards ethnic or racial minorities. This positive self-image was confirmed during World War II when in an impressive rescue operation almost all Danish Jews (the only sizeable minority group in Denmark at the time) were helped to safety in neutral Sweden. During the 1960’s and 1970’s Danish society – until then one of the most homogeneous societies in Europe – became increasingly more heterogeneous through the influx of economic migrants – ‘foreign workers’ – mainly from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. For the first time the Danes have had to deal with ethnic minorities whose culture, language, religion and physical appearance differ significantly from the majority’s. On the basis of a comprehensive attitude survey, it appears that the Danes today are less tolerant towards ‘foreign workers’ than might have been expected on the basis of their past record. This article considers whether this intolerance can be explained in terms of (1) the structure of present-day Danish society; (2) the general characteristics of the respondents (age, gender, etc.), or (3) the social and cultural characteristics of the new minorities. It is suggested that ethnic prejudice exists latently even in apparently tolerant societies and tends to surface when a ‘suitable’ target group becomes available.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1994.9993825

PDF: http://www1.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/~moise/Data/Books/Reach%20of%20culture/cultural%20racism.pdf

Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. (2019)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019.

This book represents a comprehensive effort to understand discrimination, racialization, racism, Islamophobia, anti-racist activism, and the inclusion and exclusion of minorities in Nordic countries. Examining critical media events in this heavily mediatized society, the contributors explore how processes of racialization take place in an environment dominated by commercial interests, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives and sentiments, and a surprising lack of informed research on national racism and racialization. Overall, in tracing how these individual events further racial inequalities through emotional and affective engagement, the book seeks to define the trajectory of modern racism in Scandinavia.

Content:

 1. Peter Hervik:

Racialization in the Nordic Countries: An Introduction

2. Mathias Danbolt, Lene Myong:

 Racial Turns and Returns: Recalibrations of Racial Exceptionalism in Danish Public Debates on Racism

3. Tuija Saresma:

Politics of Fear and Racialized Rape: Intersectional Reading of the Kempele Rape Case

4. Mahitab Ezz El Din:

 News Media Racialization of Muslims: The Case of Nerikes Allehanda’s Publishing of the Mohamed Caricature

5. Asta Smedegaard Nielsen:

White Fear: Habitual Whiteness and Racialization of the Threat of Terror in Danish News Journalism

6. Sayaka Osanami Törngren:

 Talking Color-Blind: Justifying and Rationalizing Attitudes Toward Interracial Marriages in Sweden

7. Mantė Vertelytė, Peter Hervik:

The Vices of Debating Racial Epithets in Danish News Media Discourse

 8. Carolina S. Boe, Karina Horsti:

Anti-Racism from the Margins: Welcoming Refugees at Schengen’s Northernmost Border

9. Christian Stokke:

Do Antiracist Efforts and Diversity Programs Make a Difference? Assessing the Case of Norway

10. Camilla Haavisto:

The Power of Being Heard: How Claims Against Racism Are Constructed, Spread, and Listened to in a Hybrid Media Environment

11. Kjetil Rødje, T. S. Thorsen:

(Re)Framing Racialization: Djurs Sommerland as a Battleground of (Anti-)Racism

12. Nasar Meer:

Whiteness and Racialization

http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-74630-2.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319746296

Hervik, Peter. ‘Lighedens diskrimination: Den danske farveblindhed i det flerkulturelle samfund’. (2001)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter. ‘Lighedens diskrimination: Den danske farveblindhed i det flerkulturelle samfund’. Nordic Journal of Human Rights, vol. 19, no. 02, Universitetsforlaget, 2001, pp. 41–53.

Lighedstænkning indtager en stor plads i de nordiske landes selvforståelse. I takt med den stigende multikulturalisme fortæller nordiske politikere og opinionsdannere igen og igen hinanden og borgerne, at alle mennesker er lige under solen, Gud og loven. Med et sådant ideal bagt ind i den nationale selvforståelse kan det være vanskeligt at se, om der foregår diskrimination af de farvede etniske minoriteter. Men diskriminationen finder sted. Og hvad værre er, at når lighedstanken i sin forsømte erkendelse af anderledeshed ligefrem vælger at optræde som farveblind, så kan også den ende med at diskriminere.

PDF: https://www.idunn.no/ntmr/2001/02/lighedens_diskrimination.

Gudrun Jensen, Tina, Kristina Weibel, and Kathrine Vitus. ‘“There Is No Racism Here”: Public Discourses on Racism, Immigrants and Integration in Denmark’. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gudrun Jensen, Tina, Kristina Weibel, and Kathrine Vitus. ‘“There Is No Racism Here”: Public Discourses on Racism, Immigrants and Integration in Denmark’. Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 51, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 51–68.

Jensen, Weibel and Vitus’s article critically discusses contemporary Danish policies aimed at the elimination of ethnoracial discrimination, drawing on policy analyses and qualitative interviews with local and national authorities in Denmark. It illustrates how questions of discrimination and racism are marginalized and de-legitimized within the dominant integration discourse, resulting in the marginalization of anti-racism in policymaking. The side-stepping of racism is being naturalized in public policies through strategies of denial and by addressing discrimination as a product of ignorance and individual prejudice rather than as embedded in social structures. The authors examine how immigration, integration and (anti-)racism as concepts and phenomena are understood and addressed in Danish public policies and discourses. Despite denials of racism in Denmark, Jensen, Weibel and Vitus show that, based on re-definitions of identities and relations, it continues to exist and is evident in public debates and policies on immigration and integration.

doi:10.1080/0031322X.2016.1270844.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2016.1270844.