At the beginning of October, the International Herald Tribune published a column written by Orland Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard. In his piece “The jailing of black America”, Patterson analyzes why America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars and why Black Americans constitute half of this country’s prisoners.
Reading him I started to wonder why so little is said about the jailing of black Sweden, the country where I live since many years.
Immigrants are here also incarcerated at far more times the rate to the white Swedish population. And this is as well having a catastrophic effect on immigrant communities and neighborhoods in many cities. But, nothing is said about it, nothing is discussed on this topic in the Swedish press.
I do think however that Orland Patterson’s analysis is accurate when he points out that it is wrong to claim that the horror of the American prisons is solely the result of white racism. The lack of power among the immigrant population in Sweden is not exclusively the product of a racist and discriminatory system. It is also the result of the immigrants’ lack of interest in fighting against it.
The sad true is that white hegemony in America, or in Sweden, or in any other place in the world, is achievable only when the none-white citizens consent to be the target of it. So, the question you must ask yourself is: Am I a part of the problem or a part of the solution?
To be “lagom” is the quintessence of being a white Swede. It means to be the barely discernible citizen who is faithful to the welfare state and who passes throughout room and time without leaving long-lasting tracks.
To be “antilagom” is a way of resisting a racist system’s assimilation process. It’s a state of mind very much needed in order to avoid becoming a silent slave.
The jailing of black Sweden
19 10 2007At the beginning of October, the International Herald Tribune published a column written by Orland Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard. In his piece “The jailing of black America”, Patterson analyzes why America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars and why Black Americans constitute half of this country’s prisoners.
Reading him I started to wonder why so little is said about the jailing of black Sweden, the country where I live since many years.
Immigrants are here also incarcerated at far more times the rate to the white Swedish population. And this is as well having a catastrophic effect on immigrant communities and neighborhoods in many cities. But, nothing is said about it, nothing is discussed on this topic in the Swedish press.
I do think however that Orland Patterson’s analysis is accurate when he points out that it is wrong to claim that the horror of the American prisons is solely the result of white racism. The lack of power among the immigrant population in Sweden is not exclusively the product of a racist and discriminatory system. It is also the result of the immigrants’ lack of interest in fighting against it.
The sad true is that white hegemony in America, or in Sweden, or in any other place in the world, is achievable only when the none-white citizens consent to be the target of it. So, the question you must ask yourself is: Am I a part of the problem or a part of the solution?