mandag 25. januar 2016

Well Informed 2.0 Racism

Racism. It is such a taboo word, that we do not like to talk about, yet yell out in every direction at the same time. The baseline of racism is that one particular race is believed to better than another, usually based on shallow characteristics or abilities. The most common one being skin color, where black vs white is centralized.

When googling racism there are numerous articles that pop up from news sources like CNN, CBS New York Daily and so forth about racism, there are also pages that are there to inform you on the subject, and carefully executed videos about the history of racism in America.  I am going to go a little off the baseline, and say that this is mostly a major problem in America, or at least the awareness of the problem is more prominent in the North American continent. Where I am from, there is a social norm called the Law of Jante:

Sadly this is a reflection of the working class of most of Scandinavia. I do not know who we or us are, but they are not taking crap from anyone. I am NOT saying that this is why racism is less noticeable,  but I do believe that people keep their mouth shut, because saying that I am better that you is not as socially acceptable as it is in America.
Free speech right? Thats one of the foundations of the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, and for some people this means shouting out that white is better than black, or yellow is better than white, and red is above everyone because they were treated badly when Christopher Columbus first settled in America. So we say what we feel, and someone yells RACISM, and we try to be more politically correct by finding other "less offensive" words to describe each other, while the meaning is still there. I believe that we are trying too hard to not be racist, that we become more aware that we all look different, or act certain ways depending on where our ancestors came from. There is racism out there, and some people are treated poorly because of what race they because of their race, but I believe that in this beloved country we are extremely good at crying wolf, overshadowing the real problems out there.

Here is my proof:
I googled racism in Norwegian (rasisme).
From this you can see that there are a bunch of wikipedia links that involves racism, and further down there is the official definition from the dictionaries (SNL) and a few web links that is supposedly informative on a teenage level.

Whereas I googled racism.
Just look at all the news articles that has popped up within the few couple days, and the list goes on and on with articles on weather or not racism is a problem, if reverse racism exist, and every possible way one can scrutinize the subject.






1 kommentar:

  1. Andrea,

    That is very interesting to see the difference in google searches when it comes to looking up racism in your native culture. I agree with you when you state "I believe that we are trying too hard to not be racist, that we become more aware that we all look different." I think there might be something to the fact that we all feel as if we need to clarify that we are not racist. Look at half of the posts from the class, we all try to make sure that we are overly sensitive in order to protect ourselves.
    I will say that while I understand some of the principles of the Law of Jante, some seem almost depressing. For example, "You're not to think you are good at anything." Is there some meaning or further explanation behind this statement. I would think that this statement would almost defeat someone who followed this law.

    SvarSlett