Riots in Stockholm. Many of the news sources don’t want to tell you who is rioting, but then they sort of have to hint because of the groups accusing that Swedish racism and inequality are the root cause. And they can’t not quote those groups, but the names of their spokespersons are so, err…obvious, dammit. What’s a good liberal newspaper to do? (Apparently they have a political phrase for “root cause” in Swedish as well as English.) Or sometimes, the subject slides over into wondering whether this “changes theimmigration debate.” It is apparently hard for immigrants to assimilate, so they just have to riot. You can find out what countries the rioters are from if you choose to work that hard.
We all remember the Swedes rioting when they came to America, right?
I have mixed emotions about how this plays out. I am of Swedish descent on one side and grew up feeling very proud of them. Meeting actual Swedes has almost always been pleasant, and Americans who go there usually have nice things to say about it. Yet the writings and quotes coming out of Sweden since I became aware of them as an adult have gradually soured me. We Americans just need to be nice tolerant people, like they are, and we wouldn’t have all these problems…
So I admire them for trying really hard to live up to their declared values, even when it’s difficult. But I also have some schadenfreude that it does, in fact, turn out to be difficult to have a peaceful country when the population is less homogeneous than your typical Luciafest.
Now that I think of it, Luciafest here in America has become pretty diverse, so that’s not so good an example as I thought. I’m trying to think of anything in America that actually is as homogeneous as Sweden 1990. White supremacist groups in America are genetically more varied than Uppsala and Lund.
I will declare again. America's only competition in the world for handling actual diversity and getting along, even forging some friendships and alliances, comes from the other Anglospheric nations. Everyone else just talks as if they would be really, really, tolerant, not like those racist Americans, if they, uh, had anyone other than their own tribe to practice it on.
See also: nice tolerant people moving to whiter nations or whiter states or even suburbs in order to get away from the racist attitudes that they disapprove of in Denmark, or Georgia, or Texas, or Germany. When you get there, you can vote for nice progressive parties.
