Blond again: Only after moving to a school in western Oslo did Mari Morken (16) dare be blond again.
Taken from here
“Why is it racism is we call them ‘black’ and not racism if they call us ‘white’”?
“I never called anybody ‘Nigger’ or ‘Black’ or anything like that. On the other hand, those of us who were White were talked about derogatorily. It was negative to be White, Christianity and Norwegian culture was negative and there were many curses,” says Mari Morken (16) and rattles them off “Whitey, potato and white cheese”
Three years ago she couldn’t take it any more. She moved from a school in Groruddalen to a school on the west side. Every morning she takes the subway to the other side of the city to escape the curses and the bad class-environment. Where she goes now, it’s good to have good grades, and she doesn’t stand out because she’s light. Before she made dark stripes in her medium-blond hair. Now she dyes her hair a bit lighter. She’s in the process of ‘taking back’ her Norwegianity, and is happy to be blond without being branded ‘whore’ and cheap’.
“Ah, girl, blond whore!”
‘Josephine’ was met with these words on the first school day at a high-school in an immigrant-dominated suburb south of Stockholm. Josphine was quite baffled, since aside from her hair color there was nothing about her appearance that would indicate she was promiscuous. She didn’t use makeup and had completely neutral clothing. It was exclusively her hair-color that branded her a ‘whore’.
‘Josephine’ is one of the informants for researchers Maria Bäckman, who did an ethnographic field study in a suburb south of Stockholm, where ethnic Swedes make up about 20% of the population. They’re therefore a minority. Klassekampen met Bäckman this week when she visited the University in Oslo and the Culcom research program (cultural complexity in the new Norway). She’s the first in Sweden who researched ethnic Swedes as a minority. A similar study was not done in Norway.
“In the suburbs the invisible Swedishness become visible. Ethnic Swedes experience being defined and labeled by their culture and religion, similarly with minorities of a different background,” Bäckman told Klassekampen.
In her study she focused on ethnic Swedish girls. They experience being linked to the notion of free, Swedish sexuality, which in the densely immigrant suburbs is not necessarily linked with something positive. The strategy for the suburb girls was therefore to play down their Swedish identity.
“Several dyed their hair. Not necessarily because they wanted to look like immigrants, but because they didn’t want to look so Swedish,” says Bäckman.
“Yes, it’s typical, Exactly like that.” Mari Morken nodded vigorously to us from the other side of the cafe table when we repeated some of what Maria Bäckman has found out. “I was called a whore so many times, I became immune.”
We meet her and her mother, Kristin Pedersen, for a talk about why Mari changed schools. They tell of systematic bullying and harassment since Mari reached puberty when she was 10-11, till she transferred school when she was 13.
Pedersen is still upset at the school’s lack of handling of the case.