Friday, September 17, 2010

Segregation

Two days until the Swedish General Election. Two days left to try to make a difference. I will continue to discuss The Sweden Democrats.

I'm a passionate and emotional person. The Sweden Democrats make me want to cry, they make me want to punch something and they make me want to hurl. But the party is not the only one to blame, I blame everybody who even considers voting for them. How can people be so introverted, narrow-minded and uneducated? Don't they realize that immigration and multi-culturalism is an intrinsic part of everybody's life, including theirs.

It can be such simple thing as the favorite foods of Swedes, like sushi, kebab, Chinese food etc. But also the dependency on workers with different ethnicities within healthcare and elderly care. But then maybe the foreign nurses and doctors are just stealing Swedish jobs. No, wait, the immigrants are a problem because they don't work and they live of Swedish taxpayers. Or, are they stealing jobs? I never seem to get this right. I'm so confused...

As an adult I've moved abroad twice. Both in the UK and the US I've been segregated, by choice. In the UK my closest friends were all from Scandinavia and we used to get together and cook "Scandinavian food", we celebrated Scandinavian holidays such as midsummer, April 30th and Lucia. Some friends and I actually started a Scandinavian Society at the University of Birmingham.

In the US, most of my close friends are Swedish. We go to IKEA together, we have "Swedish movie nights", we speak Swedish to each other, we watch the Eurovision Songcontest and we are trying to help each other's kids learn Swedish. No matter where I live, I will always speak Swedish to my husband and if we have kids, they will speak Swedish as well.

A few years back, Swedish channel 4's travel show visited a Swedish village in Minnesota. Their buildings, clothing and cultural heritage were very apparent Swedish. Many of them still spoke Swedish! I bet most Swedes who watched this tv-segment felt some sense of pride without realizing that this is the result of 200 years of segregation!

The Sweden Democrats are narrow-minded and uneducated hypocrites. But if you don't want to take my word for it, check out this intervue with the Sweden Democrats' leader in Filipstad.

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