Racism is still out there. Maybe it has just changed shapes. Orange is discovering the different shapes racism can take. This article focuses therefore on cultural racism.
In today’s society cultural racism or so called new racism on new nationalism is more frequent than the former race based racism. This cultural racism is not about genetic attributes like skin colour or body types but more cultural and is discriminating on the basis of language, behaviour, food and clothes. In this way the discriminator creates an “us” and “them” and discriminates based up on fear. One single individual can therefore discriminate or spread enemy images just by showing of negative differences between another person or groups culture.
In the western world “they”, “them” or “the other” is usually immigrants or muslims. In Germany and Sweden minorities are often called “invading turks”. The immigrant is then seen as a guest and the former inhabitants then become the hosts. The host wants the guest to assimilate and follow the rules and culture that is set up in the country. This can lead to that the immigrants are seen as laud, smelling, and temperamental religious cultural robots. When spreading these kinds of enemy images the hosts then give themselves the positive attributes or the opposite of the guests. In Sweden it is common to see immigrants as less free and more religiously tied. Immigrant woman are also often seen as oppressed and in need of liberation.
When the guest then refuses to assimilate and adopt the hosts rules or is not grateful to the hosts it becomes an unbalance between immigrants and hosts, but the host can therefore not blame their racism on the immigrants “bad behaviour”.
This unbalance or expressions of enemy images from the hosts are probably based on fear of the unknown, fear of changes or fear for the economy. In many countries political groups or parties uses this fear to get into power. It is easy to blame the bad economic development on immigrants or asylum seekers that need help when they arrive. This is how ever a similar tactic to what the Nazi-regime used against the Jews.
When enemy images are shown in media “the others” can be seen as threatening and unpredictable and when we read in the media about wars and conflicts we might also fear that the conflict might come to us and therefore fear the immigrants from these regions. We all see differences between people and cultures. It is first when we put values in these differences it becomes enemy images. These enemy images are very dangerous since they can give people the feeling that it is right to discriminate, exclude or even use violence. We have seen examples of this during the Nazi-regime in Germany or in Rwanda just a few years a go when thousands of people where murdered because of their ethnicity.
Author: Anna Siitam
