Reports of routine Swedish racism ‘grossly exaggerated’

While immigrants can find it difficult to establish a foothold on the job market in Sweden, politicians, intellectuals and the media are often too quick to make employment a race issue, writes Nima Sanandaji.

Please note the ethnic nature of the article’s author’s name! Certainly of East Indian descent. Must be because no one of pure Swedish blood can effectively write on race issues.

Listening to media, politicians and intellectuals one gets a sense that racism, overt and casual, more or less defines daily life in Sweden. But as it turns out, the case for racism is routinely overstated. And perhaps more importantly, exaggerating this social problem can in itself hinder integration.

Recently Aleksander Gabelic, Member of Parliament for the Social Democrats and President of the United Nations Association of Sweden, demanded in a debate article that racist organizations should be banned in Sweden:

“In the convention against ethnic discrimination, which Sweden has signed, it is clearly stated that racist organizations and their propaganda should not be allowed.”

The latter statement, at least to me, would indicate that conservative and nationalistic organizations are succeeding and growing in Sweden, else why would the left side of the aisle attempt to have them banned?

So why do peopel (sic) with Arabic names have more difficulty finding jobs when applying by letter, but not when on the phone or in an interview? One interpretation is that employers often assume that immigrants on average have less language skills. When job seekers show that they master Swedish on the phone or in a face-to-face conversation, most of the discriminatory effects disappear.

I can relate to the difficulty in learning Swedish. A bi-tonal language is never easy to speak; and Swedish seems particularly difficult to get the structural pattern of.

Racism is a social ill that must be combated and openly discussed. But another social problem is the way in which intellectuals exaggerate the case for racism, misleading many immigrants into believing that success is not a possible for them. It is important to give a nuanced view of discrimination and racism, communicating the obstacles as well as the opportunities to success through work and education in Swedish society.

While I disagree with the first statement in this paragraph, I think she’s on to something when she states that intellectuals who over-inflate the “problem” of racism do more harm than good.

God bless,
Laurel
who will, honestly, attempt to learn Swedish one of these days…