#alexanderbard

Well. I really couldn’t care less if Snoop Dogg never performs in Sweden again, but that’s besides the point. Of course, there is no way to determine whether he was the subject of racial profiling or not, but, even with zero knowledge about the details of his arrest I dare say with 99% certainty that he was. Almost as unsurprising as the fact that a black person was pulled over by Swedish police for a “suspected” drugs offence is the reaction from Alexander Bard, one of Swedish music industry’s more unfortunate products. Snoop Dogg was not a victim of racial profiling, Bard argues, but of “celebrity profiling”, which is apparently a thing among Swedish law enforcement officers. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The problem with Bard’s response, however, is that he went on to say that racial profiling “is an American [phenomenon] not a Swedish phenomenon”.

Bard’s political activism (in Sweden’s right of centre “Alliance”) and his political commentary have become rather infamous in Sweden. From referring to feminism as “fascism with female frontal figures” to defending his “right” to use the n-word, in Bard’s Sweden neither sexism nor racism exist because he does not experience either. 

When it comes to his denial of the latter though, he is in good company. One of the main problems with racism in Sweden, and one of the biggest obstacles to a frank and open debate about racism, is that denial of its existence runs wide and deep among white people. This is particularly the case with what is increasingly referred to in Swedish public debate as afrofobi (afrophobia). As Ylva Habel suggested in an essay on Swedish whiteness and afrofobi, there is a general acceptance that hostility toward “immigrants” exists, but few white people will admit or accept the presence of racism based on skin colour and ethnicity. Habel links this denial to the pervasive cultural belief in a direct correlation between egalitarianism and “sameness”, and which makes the very idea of racism or indeed racial difference so offensive to the average liberal white Swede that one refuses, or is even unable, to acknowledge its existence. 

While its arrival is comparatively late and still very gradual, postcolonial critique has increasingly become part of Swedish discussions about racism. Nevertheless, Habel notes, there is still a reluctance among white people to accept that Swedish whiteness and the assumptions, prejudices and privileges that come with it, are related to, feed into and are (re)produced by, global white hegemony. 

Thus, Habel argues, the problem with discussions about whiteness and racism in Sweden is that they are “rarely allowed to reach the same level of complexity as they do in more recognised postcolonial environments”, since it’s still necessary to start these discussions with the most basic questions, such as “Does racism exist in Sweden?” or “Is is relevant to talk about racialisation here, and what does it mean?”

Ironically, it is precisely in this blatant and inexcusable denial of the existence of racism that Swedish racism and whiteness reveals itself most acutely. Such as with Bard’s (willfully) ignorant comment about racial profiling. 

In the same way, when it was discovered in 2013 that a major Swedish police department was keeping a secret ethnic database registry of more than 4000 Romani people (including 1320 children), not only did the police deny that the list of names was based on ethnicity or that it was racist, there were no repercussions. None. There was a minor media frenzy and the database was deemed illegal by a different government agency and was (supposedly) shut down, but that was it. The police then investigated itself and concluded that it hadn’t kept an ethnic registry and that it wasn’t racist.