"Why" we're racist

Submitted by Swedish girl (Sweden), Nov 3, 2011 at 13:06

Okay, I'm a swede so I know how it is here. We get our prejudice against immigrants from the procentually few immigrants that actually is like that.

For example, we believe that immigrants from non-western countries are violent - well I know for a fact that there is many violent immigrants here. For example, there are two immigrant boys in my class and a few weeks ago, one of them hit a younger boy on the HEAD with a floorball stick and the other one hit another younger boy with a stick on the shin with full force. And later they got into a fight with another guy. And all that happened the same day. A girl actually got murdered in the forest behind the school by an immigrant student (he was 15!), so we've actually got some sort of basis to be afraid of immigrants, but it's far from every foreigners that is like that, that we know, but when you meet someone on the street you've got no chance of knowing what that specific person is like.

Don't get me wrong, I know there are many very nice immigrants here, I mean I've got many immIgrant friends that's treated like just another swede. If you speak swedish fluently, with a minimum accent, no swede is gonna think of you like an immigrant, even if you can see that you're not from here. There are actually three immigrant boys in my class, but automatically you say there are only two because one of them talks great swedish and acts like a swede.

If you're gonna be treated like an ethnic swede, it depends a lot of the way you speak. And the way you dress. ALL humans normally fear the unknown in some level. Actually, the immigrants that's been here almost their whole life and sound and dress like swedes, are just as racist as the ethnic swedes. I know an adult immigrant from Iraq or something like that, and he's been in Sweden for like three years or something, and he can't speek swedish very well, but he's said in english that the immigrants that come here shoplifts and all that stuff, and he's an immigrant himself. Does that mean he's racist?

And to the person who wrote that Swedes were arrogant because we don't let muslims have different laws, get to learn their native language in school and have separate swim lessons - Well why ... would you have any right to be treated any different than Swedes in Sweden. Wasn't it to be treated the same way as us the thing you wanted? And the actually get to study their home language in school. But separate swim lessons? C'mon, don't come here and think you can exchange our culture for your own.

Please, we're not any less racist than any other ethnic group. Isn't it racist to us to say that we are racist? It's just as racist as to say that Iraqis are violent.

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