On Taming One's Racism

Scandinavians, prejudice, and taming my own racism

That every man is racist to some degree, whether intentionally or by accident, is a fact readily admitted by most people. Yet the idea that man is born racist, and will always be so despite his best intentions, is an idea that has fallen out of fashion. 

These two ideas — that all men are racist, but that man himself is not inherently so — are plainly incompatible, for it would follow that we would occasionally meet men who, despite the odds, were entirely free from prejudicial sentiment. 

Experience tells us that these men do not exist. Indeed, we can observe even in little babies the sproutlings of racism. I once observed a nephew of mine stealthily pocket one of his toys as he saw a Bulgarian playmate approach. 

We are not Rousseauians, I hope, and we accept that man is born with racism already in him. But neither do we believe that this racism is born with the object of its hate already defined. Racism is a mere tendency, and it is possible to canalise and neutralise it, so that we may live in relative peace with our neighbour races. I will explain what I mean:

I myself have an irrational dislike of Scandinavians. For some pigheaded reason I find their culture perverse, and the mere sound of their language is enough to make me physically sick. If I smell pickled herring or meatballs I am forced to repress a racist diatribe against them. And if I see a person of my own race wearing a Lusekofte jumper, the words “race traitor” are liable to flash across my mind.

I am very aware that “Scandinavian” is a term which encompasses a number of countries, and a number of peoples, with as wide a genetic makeup and number of cultural differences as exist between myself and the average Lithuanian (for whom I hold no contempt or racist sentiment whatsoever). I am aware, too, that if I were to educate myself even cursorily on Scandinavian culture, and if I were to make some small effort to learn their language, most, if not all, of my racist feelings would dissipate. 

But my ignorance has been cultivated to a purpose. I have not once met a Scandinavian, and am unlikely to as long as I remain outside of Scandinavia. I am therefore unlikely to do them any harm by my prejudice. Scandinavians, too, look (to the unprejudiced eye) very much like my own race, and have suffered no notable discrimination by other races in their long history. I am unlikely, then, to raise many eyebrows if I accidentally let slip my dislike for them in public, and less likely still to face any legal consequences. 

I feel no prejudice against any other race, but it is precisely my cultivated dislike of the Scandinavians which allows me to love all other races with equal measure. I will no sooner praise a Russian or a Kazakh than I will add “unlike those porcelain-skinned, diamond-jawed Scandies”, so that my praise of the former is impossible without my racism against the latter. 

Love is impossible without prejudice, and it is better that this prejudice be confined to a race which will suffer the fewest consequences. I have poured too much effort into my Scandiphobia now, but were I to repeat the experiment on my own children, I would make an effort to concentrate all of their inherent racism into a single, obscure Papua New Guinea tribe, liberating all other races from being victims of their prejudice, with all of their hate being directed to a people who would never even hear about it.