The Meaning of Ethnic Equality in Scandinavian Anti-Discrimination Legislation

Abstract

Ethnicity is an academically contested concept and has multiple meanings in everyday communication. The present article analyses recent Swedish and Norwegian anti-discrimination law reform documents and asks how policymakers debate the meaning of ethnic equality, and the consequence of this debate for the incorporation of preferential treatment regulation in the law. The analysis suggests that ethnicity must be interpreted through a multifaceted lens of 'othering' in order to allow for 'appropriate' distinctions between relevant groups. This raises particularly challenging questions for proactive equality work, a central component of the anti-discrimination legislation in these countries.

Colour-Blind Attitudes among Welfare Professionals: Examining the Relationship Between Colour-Blind Attitudes, Anti-immigration Attitudes and Social Desirability

“…Race should simply have no meaning in Sweden, and racism is portrayed as an issue that 'other countries' have (Lundström 2021). One example is the removal of the term 'race' from Swedish anti-discrimination legislation and the Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality (2009) positing that including the term race in the legal text could be perceived as legitimising racist ideas (Reisel 2015). This shows how much colour blindness is used as the default approach in society to then be picked up through social norms (Apfelbaum, Norton & Sommers 2012).…”