When it comes to the portrayal of Sweden, two attributes come to mind; solidarity and humanity. According to international rankings, Sweden is seen as a country that has the best integration policies and anti-discriminations laws of the western world (KÄLLA, fotnot 23, sid.222). The question is why and how this small Nordic achieved a country almost free from racism, both from Sweden itself and to the rest of the world? The fact is, Sweden has many dark sides throughout different eras, well hidden from the majority of people. One example that speaks for itself is how for this group project, I wanted to write about the difference between the history of racism in Sweden and the U.S since I thought Sweden was never a colonial country. After some research, it was evident that this was false; a fact that was never taught in history lessons in school. In 2002, even the Swedish aid minister of that time uttered, free translated, “Sweden has no colonial heritage” (Karlsson, 2002, p.2) For nearly seven hundred years, Finland was a part of the Swedish kingdom. In the Middle ages, Finland was conquered by Swedish Christian crusaders after requests from the Pope …show more content…
Concerning this topic, he says that his observations of the society is that the general idea of racism is not something that takes place right now in Sweden but does in other eras, other countries and other subcultures. During the time of the social engineering, the value of rational thinking became stronger which did not allow racial prejudices and made it hard to use race as a concept. This can be interpreted as a collective society denial. In 1960, a Swedish newspaper wrote, “Racial hate has never got a footing in our country. Therefore we also live happier than others” (Dala-Demokraten, 1960). Another quote that shows the general denial of the once racist