Afro-Nordic landscapes : engaging blackness in Northern Europe

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogeneously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race, and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics? This text is a must read for anyone interested in issues of race in the Nordic region and Europe writ large. As Paul Gilroy writes in his foreword, it is a book that "should be studied with care and profit inside the Nordic countries and also outside them by the broader international readership that has been established around the study of racism and 'critical race theory.'" Cover 1 Half Title 4 Title Page 6 Copyright Page 7 Dedication 8 Table of Contents 10 Foreword 12 Acknowledgments 20 Introduction 22 I. 22 II. 24 III. 26 Notes 30 Bibliography 32 Part I: The Nation 36 1. Imagining Blackness at the Margins: Race and Difference in Iceland 38 Africa in Iceland Prior to the 19th Century 40 Creating a Racial Community in Iceland 42 Racial Meanings in Contemporary Iceland 46 Notes 50 Bibliography 55 2. Queendom: On Being Black, Feminist Norwegian Women 60 ‘Race’ and Racism in Norway 61 A Feminist Queendom: “We are all Women that Work for Women to be Better Women” 63 An Anti-Racist Queendom: “You Delete us from Our Own History of Being Here: Don’t do that!” 68 The Differences that Make us: Concluding Remarks 71 Notes 72 Bibliography 75 3. The Midnight Sun Never Sets: An Email Conversation About Jazz, Race and National Identity in Denmark, Norway and Sweden 78 The Early Reception 78 From Demonized to Assimilated 81 WWII 84 The Harlem Kiddies 85 The Golden Years of Swedish Jazz 87 The Jazz Capitol 90 Race in “The Cop” 93 Tchicai 95 Jazz as High Art 97 A Nordic Tone? 98 Mazur 101 Part II: Racism 106 4. There’s a White Elephant in the Room: Equality and Race in (Northern) Europe 108 Dignity First 109 Humanism or Pseudo-Humanism? 110 The Politics of Race Blindness 115 White Supremacy 121 Embodying Equality 124 Notes 127 Bibliography 135 5. Racism Is No Joke: A Swedish Minister and a Hottentot Venus Cake—An Email Conversation 141 Dissenting Voices 142 Representing the State 144 Whose Freedom? 147 Empowering African Women 150 Afromantics 155 A Nation of Anti-Racists 159 Black Skull Consciousness? 163 Politicizing Black Swedish Subjectivity 167 6. Searching for Words: Becoming Mixed Race, Black and Swedish 170 A Swedish Context 171 Mixed How? 175 Becoming a Nomadic Subject 179 Notes 180 Bibliography 182 7. Bertrand Besigye’s Civilization Critique: An Aesthetics of Blackness in Norway 183 Against Racism 184 Against an Alienating Norwegianness 190 An-Other Vision 193 Notes 196 8. Two Poems by Bertrand Besigye 199 How a Black African Orders Black Coffee 199 You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down. or Black Hail Over all of West Side 203 Part III: Diaspora 206 9. Talking Back: Voices from the African Diaspora in Finland 208 “Black” in Finland 209 Finns’ Knowledge of Africans 211 Memoirs of the Only Black Finn 212 African Students in Finland 216 Discourses of Immigration 219 Talking Back to Exclusive Finnishness 221 Notes 222 Bibliography 226 10. Den Sorte: Nella Larsen and Denmark 229 In Search of Nella Larsen—In Denmark 230 “We Don’t Think of These Things Here”: Race and Colonialism in Quicksand’s Copenhagen 233 Frøkken Crane Goes to Nørrebronx: “New Danes” and “Danish Values” in the Twenty-First Century 239 Notes 244 11. A Horn of Africa in Northern Europe—An Email Conversation 248 Speaking of Racism 248 Discrimination in Context 253 Black in the Horn 259 Politicizing Race 263 Speaking of Integration 266 Contributors 272 Index 280