Nachspiel at Polemarchus' » racism http://polemarchus.net A political science blog Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:32:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Race – an outdated concept? http://polemarchus.net/2010/01/29/race-an-outdated-concept/ http://polemarchus.net/2010/01/29/race-an-outdated-concept/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:51:32 +0000 Sverre http://polemarchus.net/?p=475 Great controversy has apparently arisen in the US over the inclusion of the word “negro” in a national census. Once again I am reminded of the different reality I live in. Where I come from, Norway, race isn’t a concept we’re familiar with neither in social science nor politics. Nationality (including second and third generation immigrants), religion and cultural heritage are certainly issues, but genetic “race” alone is an alien concept. We do have some dark blotches on our record, most notably treatment of Jews before WWII and the Rom and indigenous Sami peoples until far too recent years. In present day Norway, I perceive the concept of race as one that belongs to the extreme right fringe of society.

This might be the result of a Scandinavian (possibly harmful?) naivité about such issues, possibly brought on by a very homogenous ethnic makeup.1 It may also be the result of a society that has been able to advance beyond a harmful focus on race. I saw an example of the opposite up close when living in Malaysia, a thoroughly race-focused country where race and religion ar important for official categorization of people. It is the story of a massive affirmative action programme that has spiralled totally out of control and become the basis for widespread discrimination in society.

I may be wrong, but my impression as an outsider is still that focus on the concept of race appears to bring more harm than good. The problem in the US is as I understand it that large groups have low income, low social mobility, language problems, high unemployment et cetera, not that the members of these groups have a different skin tone. Language holds power, and official contributions to keeping racial divisions an active part of the language may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Am I just an naively idealistic Scandinavian with an unrealistic view of the world?

  1. The CIA World Factbook lists the 2007 estimate as: Norwegian 94.4% (includes Sami, about 60,000), other European 3.6%, other 2%
]]> http://polemarchus.net/2010/01/29/race-an-outdated-concept/feed/ 0 Racism paving the way to government? http://polemarchus.net/2009/03/01/racism-paving-the-way-to-government/ http://polemarchus.net/2009/03/01/racism-paving-the-way-to-government/#comments Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:53:42 +0000 Sverre http://polemarchus.net/?p=283 The so called “long campaign” before the Norwegian parliamentary election is well under way, and once again it appears that immigration will be a central topic. In the aftermath of a controversy over whether or not to allow islamic headdress (hijab) with Norwegian police uniforms, the populist right-wing party Fremskrittspartiet has started campaigning about the so called secret “Islamization” of Norwegian society. If they succeed in keeping this a hot topic throughout the campaign, previous experience shows they might gain  much in terms of votes.

Fremskrittspartiet has always been a party critical to immigration and foreign cultural influence. It may not be quite fair to compare them with Jörg Haider in Austria or Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, but to a certain degree they play on some of the same fears.

In a project paper I previously posted on this blog, one of the few clearly significant correlations I could find in the occasionally rather contradictory voter mass of this party was between the propensity to vote for FrP and a scepticial attitude to foreign culture. In previous elections they have gained much whenever immigration and scepticism to foreign cultures has been allowed to become a dominant topic in the election campaigns

At the moment, foreign influence on Norwegian culture is one of the hot topics in Norwegian politics. But the election is still many months off, and it will take hard work, skill and some luck for Fremskrittspartiet to be able to keep this topic alive all the way until September, but if they manage it they might actually be able to make their ambitions for government power somewhat more credible than they are today.

And with so much to gain, I suspect that Fremskrittspartiet will give it a go. Besides the general comments about islamization, party leader Siv Jensen has also recently launched (verbal) attacks at a university college for allowing an imam that denies Holocaust to speak to students and the government for letting international agreements get in the way of expelling suspected Iraqi terrorist-supporter Mullah Krekar.

We may be looking at a season of political debate that might become very ugly indeed…

Further reading:

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