All countries have racists

Submitted by Laszlo Garay (Sweden), May 26, 2011 at 15:15

I being swedish myself admit that there is racism in sweden.

Everyone know it is true. But Sweden is by far not the most racist country in Europe.

For example Hungary is more racist. Romas have felt the need to relocate from certain areas in Hungary because they fear for their safety.

Being a second generation immigrant to sweden, from Hungary in fact I do not agree that swedes in general are more recist than people in general. Sure they believe that Sweden is one of the best countries in the world to live in and I agree with them but they dont look down on everybody else.

As you mention yourself Sweden has allowed a lot of immigrants to settle down and recreate their lives in sweden. Obviously that puts some strain on the swedish society with a lot of refuges from the third world countries that need therapy, housing, food, education both in swedish and sometimes general education.

The free courses in swedish is part of that education and it does help. Atleast it helped my father. But the courses themselfes are not enought, you need to let your language skills evolve outside class to. Otherwise it would be taking ages to learn swedish fluently.

Now, our health care system has a lot of flaws and as does the one in UK and all other health care systems as well (all systems actually). We hear about shortages of beds in our hospitals and accidents during treatment all the time and it is not only foreigners that receive bad treatment.

The judical system on the other hand do have more serious problems. For example the names in training exercises etc. But the police might be influenced by the fact that immigrants commit more crimes. That on the other hand does not justify the racist comments and actions taken by some of people in the policeforce.

Conserning those photos in the airport they are pictures of famous swedes. Including swedes orgiginating from another part of the world. Nothing racist about it. And i dont know how you could have missed all the people with scarfs and also burka thought I admit burkas are failry rare.

About the financial aid to immigrants. What would you have us do? We give them money so that they can be able to live better lives and the fact that they only want jobs does not change anything. Everybody wants a job. More than 8% of swedes are unemployed and over 20% of the young people.

And the historical part with purity deparetments and oppression of the finns is sadly not unique in europe. For example the holocaust, slavery, cruel colonialism, oppression of the romas (and Ireland) and so on. It is a sad fact that most, not to claim all european countries have used some sort of race laws or general oppression of outsiders.

By the way swedes doesn't even drink enought alcohol to place on the top(?) 15 countries by alcohol consumption (in the world) while UK does (place 15 ) =)

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