Sweden, a Society of Covert Racism: Equal from the Outside: Everyday Racism and Ethnic Discrimination in Swedish Society
Keywords:
Gender and law, intersectionality, racism, sociology of law, Swedish labour court, Género y derecho, interseccionalidad, racismo, sociología jurídica, tribunales de lo laboral suecosAbstract
Sweden is widely considered to have one of the most equal and gender-equal societies in the world. But the Swedish society is also one in which the Labour Court can find discrimination when a 60-year-old ‘Swedish’ ‘white’ woman fails to get a job interview – yet not when workers call a colleague of Gambian background ‘blackie’, ‘big black bastard’, ‘the African’, and ‘svartskalle’, or a man of Nigerian background ‘Tony Mogadishu’ and ‘Koko stupid’. In this article, I will try to explain the logic behind these positions. I will also suggest an extended jurisprudential methodology that might help to prevent laws and the legal system from reinforcing societal processes of racialization. In this article I will argue that it is necessary to develop the legal methods to make it possible to forestall and prevent racism. To prevent everyday racism in the way intended by the law in books, the courts must take into account the living law and the law in action. If the courts are allowed to continue applying the law according to their whim, without even considering their position as representatives for the power of dominant ‘white’ groups over subordinated people of colour, then it is obvious that the living law that is the dominant discourse of ‘white’ normalcy will never change.
Es comúnmente aceptado que Suecia tiene una de las sociedades más igualitarias, también en cuestiones de género, del mundo. Pero la sociedad sueca es también aquella en la que el juzgado de lo laboral puede encontrar discriminación en que una mujer de 60 años, "sueca" y "blanca" no consiga una entrevista de trabajo – pero no cuando trabajadores llaman a un colega de origen gambiano "negrito", "gran bastardo negro", "africano", y "espalda mojada", o a un hombre de origen nigeriano "Tony Mogadiscio" y "Koko estúpido". En este artículo, se va a intentar explicar la lógica de estas posiciones. También se va a sugerir una metodología jurisprudencial extendida que podría ayudar a evitar que las leyes y el sistema legal consoliden la racialización de procesos sociales. En este artículo se defiende que es necesario desarrollar métodos legales para que sea posible impedir y prevenir el racismo. Para evitar el racismo cotidiano en la forma prevista por el derecho en los libros, los tribunales deben tener en cuenta el derecho vivo y la ley en vigor. Si se permite que los tribunales sigan aplicando la ley a su antojo, sin considerar siquiera su condición de representantes del poder de los grupos dominantes "blancos" sobre las personas de color subordinadas, es entonces obvio que el derecho vivo, que es el discurso dominante de mayoría "blanca", nunca va a cambiar.
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